Terrible Creatures
by lenina20
Summary: On a full-moon night, while the Spirits observe and design, Hayley bargains for her life; Klaus hovers and haunts; Rebekah makes a promise, and Caroline bends her rubber heart so it doesn't break. Klaus/Caroline. Ensemble. TO/TVD crossover. Canon-compliant. Multi-chaptered.
1. Chapter 1

**Hello everyone! How are you doing? Here is my new story. If you're reading, I hope that you will like it. But before we get started, I'd like to point out a couple of things.**

**disclaimer one: **this story, as it will be obvious once you start reading, will be very different from Mardi Gras in both, style and tone. I get that it may not be to everyone's tastes, and for that I apologize. However, this is the story I need to write right now, and the tone and style are those that come naturally when I'm trying to craft the dark, adult, messed-up baby fic I'd like this story to be. For those of you that will read this story, I hope you find something in it that you'll enjoy. I'm hoping it'll be shorter than Mardi Gras, but I can never be sure about that since it contains plot. Also, I'm not promising regular updates, because summertime is a bit unpredictable for me. But as every time, I will do my best.

**disclaimer two:** for the purposes of this story, Whitmore College is in Mystic Falls, but a bit removed from town. This is very confusing in canon, as it seems that WC is _not_ in MF, and yet it seems to be under the jurisdiction of Liz Forbes. So until this is retconned into making some sort of sense next season, I'm locating Whitmore College in the town of Mystic Falls (as I also did in Mardi Gras).

**warning: **I like to write canon compliant fic as a way to control the parts of canon that I don't like. So please take this as a warning for Stefan/Caroline in this chapter. However, as I hope it will be obvious, this story will be purely, one hundred percent Klaus/Caroline. It will not be a pleasant journey, though; and the burn is going to be a bit on the slow side. Hope you won't be too discouraged to read. I wrote MG to make KC possible in spite of the spinoff. I'm writing this to make KC possible in spite of the baby. Exploring the KC romance is the main point of the story, but like MG, this fic will feature a wide variety of characters that I will try to give their own stories so they aren't just used as plot devices. So expect other characters and other stories besides (and in fact, _beside_) the messed-up KC love story. There'll be Mabekah because this fic is canon-complaint, but I will not make any promises about whether this story will end with Stebekah. If you've read anything by me, I'm sure you'll understand what I'm saying. There'll be Kennett, though I can't say how romantic it will be (but they will be working together). Steroline will remain best friends. Tayley, of a kind, we'll see. Canon-compliant Delena and Kalijah, too. Silas will be part of this story. Rebekah is going to be a major character, so expect a lot of Rebekoline. And… that is all, I think.

**Please enjoy the chapter!**

* * *

**.-.**

His hands were trembling on her thighs.

She doesn't remember much more about the whole nasty business. She was drunk on bourbon and a wounded pride because she always had a knack for irony, and so does her good friend Stefan. He was drunk, too. You know what they say about loneliness and wounded prides and post-traumatic stress disorder, right?

It was a bad idea, anyway.

Long story short, listen: just don't go to bed with your best friend after he has spent months enduring unimaginable torture. Or do it, at your own risk. But know that death by drowning is no fun. It becomes an addiction after a while, or so Stefan has told her. The pain is self-inflicted. Doesn't that tell you all? The determination to just _not_ breathe. The lungs expanding to the point of bursting. The blood thickening like mud in your veins after oxygen runs out. And you forget that the fight and the pain are pointless. You're already dead—

You are a vampire, you_ idiot_.

Just let the water in. Why fight it? Why treasure the pain of combusting lungs? You'll feel the cool rush pouring down your throat if you open your mouth and it'll flood your chest and you'll shiver in utter pleasure for just a second. You'll fall asleep into such blissful unconsciousness. Go on. Enjoy it.

You'll wake up eventually.

You _idiot_.

Why even bother, resisting the urge to breathe in your little coffin bellow the surface and let the water in?

* * *

**.-.**

Caroline knows better. Caroline lets the water in.

She gets drunk and lets unconsciousness take over. She goes to bed with Stefan. _Yes_, in case you're same night she finds out that Hayley the Werewolf Bitch is pregnant with Klaus's baby. For real. What is the opposite of a miracle? Like a miracle of pure evil? Well, that is the punch the unbelievable piece of news is packing. Have you seen _Rosemary's Baby_? That is Caroline's freaking life. You know, if Rosemary were a two-faced nasty werewolf _slut_—

Of course she gets drunk out of her face. Shut the hell up and fuck off with your pesky little judgements. She drinks bourbon until she can't see straight anymore, so that she can phantom the taste and you know, _what the freaking hell_, she can get a free pass just this once. To mess it all up good. Tyler's left her. He's gone in search of a pack, he says. In search of a new family, he says. In search of wolves, of course.

Isn't that so funny, that Tyler is looking for a new family of wolves and Klaus is breeding exactly that with the insignificant backstabbing bitch that got Tyler's pack—or was it Klaus's pack?—massacred like pigs? It's Tyler who finds out, of course, the universe is an evil little bitch after all. He finds out right as she starts out his quest. Hayley's pregnant with Klaus's little wolf pup. It's also Tyler who tells Caroline, of course. But Caroline—

Good time as any to go back to crappy old habits, isn't it? She has nothing to lose. She is already dead. Completely dead. One hundred percent dead. _Unlike other people_, nudge nudge, wink what's the worst thing that can happen, right? She can't get sick. She can't get pregnant. She isn't going to ruin her only functioning non-destructive relationship with her best friend—

—how _dare_ you judge her? She is a free and independent woman who can do as she pleases with her body and undead sexuality, thank you for your concern.

* * *

.-.

It helps her understand, at least.

After Stefan's trembling hands stop trembling and she smoothes her crumpled skirt over her thighs; after she can't feel it anymore, Stefan's liquor breath moist on her neck and _God_, he didn't even kiss her. Didn't even bother trying. Didn't even _want_—

Caroline was better than this. Wasn't she?

Caroline had changed and matured and learned to love herself. She was above and beyond all this. She _is_ better now. She respects herself. She has been murdered, smothered with a pillow out of this world; and she has come back from the dead, stronger and a better fighter. She has resisted every relentless thrust of the tide for such a long time. She's not impulsive anymore. She isn't reckless. She doesn't sell herself so cheap. She doesn't need—she isn't _needy_—

—but _oh_, she understands, she thinks, when it's all over. The immediate second Stefan pulls away. He looks repulsed. Not by her, of course; how can you think that Stefan, _good_ Stefan would ever—? No, you don't get it. He is disgusted with himself. In spite of the momentary relief, he is _disgusted_.And Caroline understands (she thinks). Why he refused for so long to let the water in. Why he held his breath in his underwater sepulchre. Why he welcomes the pain.

Stefan is hurt right inside his dead stone-cold heart.

He's been abandoned. He's been discarded by the girl he loved—the girl he thought he would love _forever_ and hey, don't pretend like you know what that means unless you are a vampire and the original hybrid tells you that he intends to be your _last_ love and… does he mean that he will kill you before he lets you go? Probably. But Stefan is _different_. He chooses death by drowning and lets his darling go. Shesays she has fallen for his brother, can you believe that? She says that he's the worst choice that she will ever make, and don't they all already know that? But still—she _chose_. She dared. She jumped. Kudos to Elena.

How _brave_ and reckless and dangerous of her. Good, compassionate, _perfect_ Elena. Look at her, daring to love the bad guy.

* * *

.-.

Caroline isn't jealous of the torture that Stefan has endured, don't misunderstand her. She isn't that big a masochist.

She's had enough of being tortured herself, and she is _done_ with it all. She is done with the pain. But that doesn't mean that she can't understand—

Perhaps, she figures, that's why she parts her thighs, rolls her red lacy panties down her calves and leaves them hanging around her ankle while her best friend fucks her like his heart is really not that into it. Like he's only half-ass trying, you know—trying to _feel_ something and holding his pointless breath in his bursting lungs until every pore of his skin is burning and every muscle is so strained that the pain is pure torment, the blood boiling like flames dancing in his veins. But it's ov er too soon, after a few rushed, clumsy, inebriated thrusts, and when it's done—

—there is no rush of freezing cold lake water rushing in. No chance of going back to sleep and slipping into sweet oblivion.

Caroline feels just as emptied out; hollow, like her insides have been carved out and all she is now is an empty recipient made of brittle clay. She is just as alone as Stefan is. And maybe that is why—

She still tries to comfort him, because that is who Caroline is. She wraps her fingers in his hair and hugs him like you would hug your best friend in a time of need.

"It's going to be okay," she lies.

* * *

.-.

But that story is not the story she tells April Young when April Young asks, one random full-moon night in the dorm room Caroline shares with Elena.

She's there so they help her look at college applications because they used to be her babysitters and poor _thing_, how can they explain now that they have cheated their way into their ridiculous little town school in the exact same way that they are going to cheat their way into anything else they wish to do for the rest of their eternal lives: half-heartedly and with below-zero aspirations of grandeur. Come _on_, they could be at the Sorbonne right now, couldn't they? And look at them and their pitifully tiny dorm room in Mystic Falls.

"So… you and Stefan?"

"I would have always wondered," Caroline lies through her million-dollar smile. That's something a seventeen-year old can relate to, right? Curiosity. A sense of wonder. "I mean, I know now that we're meant to be best friends but… there was this tension, you know? If we hadn't at least tried, we would have spent the rest of our lives wondering if maybe there was something good that we were missing just because we were too afraid to try."

Oh, the _bullshit_. The pg-rated _bullshit_.

They didn't try anything. They _fucked_. Stefan was in pain and messed-up in the head and Caroline was boiling with a jealousy she had denied herself the right to feel. And you know what made it so _much_ worse? Stefan didn't even ask; if he wondered why Caroline was okay with letting him fuck her, he never said a word of worry. Why would she—? Just to make him feel better? Stroke his cock in the palm of her hand to soothe his pain? Can Caroline really be that generous, that _selfless_?

Perhaps Stefan thought so. Hey, she won't hold it against him. Hardly the first person to take Caroline's giving-and-caring nature for granted, is he now? Or perhaps—she's being unfair. She will give her best friend the benefit of the doubt, at least. So perhaps, he just assumed that she was heartbroken over Tyler leaving her. That maybe she was the on in need of some sexual healing. Because _Tyler_ left her.

That makes sense, doesn't it?

* * *

.-.

Elena laughs merrily, after Caroline offers her bullshit explanation in response to April's gossiping. She laughs in good humour and there's barely a trace of bitterness in the chuckles bubbling up her throat because, in case you're curious, she is not jealous that Stefan slept with Caroline. Didn't Stefan sleep with Rebekah like a week after he broke up with her? Didn't Elena sleep with Damon, umm, the _day_ after Stefan broke up with her?

No, she isn't—

She isn't jealous. There's a tiny little pang of betrayal itching right below her heart but she knows that is meant only for Caroline and—okay, fine. She doesn't lack complete self-awareness. She knows. What a gigantic bitch it makes of her, that she feels betrayed because her only (kind of) living and breathing friend went to bed with her ex-boyfriend. After Elena tried to kill her twice, and she tried to kill her mom and she stole her prom dress just to see prim-and-proper Caroline squirm and _suffer_—

But still Elena laughs at her excuses. Because come _on._ She can't help herself.

"Sure, Care," she chortles, her heart expanding. "Like it's _Stefan_ that you're going to spend the rest of your life wondering about."

They all have eyes to see, and it is almost pitiful, very sad, the way Caroline stays away from all the bad boys in every college party they attend. Elena is _long_ past judging and, _yeah_, she figures it's the lack of judgement in the accusation that keeps Caroline for aiming directly at her throat, nails pulled sharp and fangs bared monstrously. It's the lack of judgment that moulds Caroline's scold into a pacifying saddened little smile. Yes, she did sleep with her friend's ex-boyfriend for no good reason whatsoever and how did April Young even find out? Oh, right. Matt. Maybe Elena told Jeremy, but Caroline told Matt. Which means that Rebekah, who will act a lot more butt-hurt than Elena, Caroline is sure, also knows. Which means that Klaus, maybe—

Caroline pleads guilty of all charges.

Of how much and how often she's thought that, hell yeah, it'd be nice to have a bad boy ruffle her perfect feathers.

And well, not _any_ bad boy.

Do you get how utterly screwed she is?

* * *

.-.

"Stefan is safe," Elena told her in confidence, after Caroline confessed, not a hint of a tear, not the shade of a blush colouring her porcelain cheeks. "Stefan is the kind of love that we think we should aspire to."

Aspire. Inspire. Perspire.

She bites the rebellious terrible smile against the inside of her cheek and nods dutifully. Wouldn't Elena know? Elena who fought tooth and nail against the tainted pitch-black love that was boiling like tar in her veins. For the guy who murdered her little brother. The guy who crept into her dreams and tried to force his love on her even if she pushed it and kicked it away. The guy who used and abused her good friend Caroline, and so many others that came before. But, Caroline though. Sweet Caroline, open-hearted despite the gigantic foot in her mouth. Insensitive and yet so vulnerable. Elena's new boyfriend—he used her like a doll. He skimmed thought the dog-eared pages of her treasured _Twilight_ saga, parts I, II and III, and made jokes, _this is not what vampires are like. This is not what a vampire's love for a human is like. We take and we feed and we fuck and we make you bleed until not a drop is left_—learn your lesson, sweet Caroline. That is what a vampire love is like.

She got it. She learned. She _ran_.

But Stefan is different, isn't he? Stefan is safe.

Stefan who denies his nature. Stefan who was dealt a terrible hand with only the bad parts of becoming a creature of the night. The incontrollable hunger. The irresistible allure of the blood-thirst. Cut off their heads and rip away their limbs until they aren't people anymore—they aren't girls with their pretty faces and their soft lips and their gentle hands. They are just pieces of meat and he is the butcher and look at him in action, he can pull them back together in a minute. Sit them placidly on the couch. Rest this severed arm on the cushion so it still seems attached to her shoulder. Place the disengaged head tenderly over the guillotined neck.

Stefan is _safe_. Because Stefan resists. Stefan denies. Isn't that what Caroline wants, too?

He may be a little messed-up in the head, a little bit worse for wear after he found out about his shadow self and spent three months locked up in a flooding tomb, but Stefan is _safe_. The Ripper of Monterrey. Klaus's best and only friend, a while back in Chicago during the rotten twenties. Stefan is _safe_, and—

—did Caroline fuck him because Stefan is (or was) _his_ friend?

No—

Stefan is _safe_. Stefan may be a little messed up in the head but he will not rock her world and wreck it up, rip it apart and leave it hanging upside down. With just the brush of his antique lips pressed so softly to the tingling skin of her cheek.

* * *

.-.

"We're still best friends," she tells April, conversationally. "We'll always be—"

The words trail off as she catches their scents, salty and sour like sweat as it invades her nostrils, at least five seconds of thick silence before Tyler knocks on her door. Knuckles on wood; quick and nervous, but quiet because he trusts their vampire ears to hear without him needing to disturb their classmates who sleep or study or watch TV in their laptops all the way down the carpeted corridor.

Of course they—

They hear. They _smell_. But above all, when the steps stop before their door, they _hear_.Elena raises her eyebrows in shock and Caroline wonders, if it's the fact that Hayley is standing at the other side of the door that surprises her, or if it's the racing blood that begins pumping out of Caroline's heart the instant that she notices.

Hayley is standing next to Tyler.

Her scent is unfamiliar, so close to his smell that Caroline knows so well. But there is no mistaking the drumming of three heartbeats batting their butterfly wings so terribly out of synchrony. A nervous girl—scared, might be: her heart flutters like a leaf beneath a storm. A dead wolf by her side, well fed; the rhythm slow and gentle and deep and even. And beneath their uncoordinated pulsing, a healthy baby's heart, palpitating quick and sturdy inside his mother's womb.

* * *

.-.

"What are you doing here?"

"Care, we need your help."

He steps a foot inside the room, just in time to stop the door from slamming on his face. He clenches his jaw and grinds his teeth together, but it's Hayley who speaks, her voice unnaturally small, her eyes hiding away like she's ashamed of herself. Why? Because a bad-boy Casanova knocked her up? If you ask Caroline, that doesn't rank very high in the list of wrongs she's crammed into her backpack, the little dauntless vagabond wolf.

"He's going to kill me."

Oh, well—

—umm, _duh_.

April is whispering in the background, secret-sharing with Elena. _Is that—? Are they—?_ The words are mumbled beneath a shocked puff of air, but Caroline hears, of course, and a cold-hearted smile curls on her lips. _He's going to kill me_. Oh, little human innocent girl, if only you knew. She bites back a bitter laugh because hey, _could be_. That they are together, Tyler and Hayley, and that is their baby. Right? This could have been how the Appalachians turned out. He's a hybrid and she's a werewolf. A bee carries and deposits the pollen into a beautifully gloomed flower, and a little multicoloured hummingbird will lay its eggs in nine moons time. It's the miracle of life, pushing its way through their forest of utter and all-encompassing death.

It's a happy thought, yeah—but one Caroline wants no part of. She grips the doorknob so hard that it hurts her; thatshe feels it shaking in its hinges, the screws loosening and scraping the cheap composite of the door. She doesn't stop smiling, however.

"That's not my problem."

"Caroline, please. He's going to kill her."

She tilts one shoulder, crunches up her face. "Yeah, she already said that." Her head turns. Hayley is still hiding her big beautiful eyes away, still looking at the floor. Caroline doesn't suppose they have carpets in the slum where she was born and raised. Must be so fascinating. Tyler is holding the door open so well, just let her try one last time—

"You shouldn't have come here."

True. Caroline knows what they want. They're here to plead for Hayley's life. She got Klaus to let go of his evil plans of revenge against Tyler, didn't she? Tyler was Caroline's first love. Klaus's intended to be her last. Hayley fits somewhere in the middle of such epic tales of romance, Caroline can't really figure out where exactly. Little matters now that she wants out—_now_, after she has lied down herself, legs parted for the big bad wolf, eyes glued to the ceiling, the pretty golden V. of her neck strategically placed right beneath the guillotine. It was her choice, wasn't it? I mean, what was she expecting, right?

Tyler insists, not a trace of shame in his begging for the traitor's neck. "Caroline, please—"

Caroline's eyes don't stray an inch from Hayley's pretty, soft-looking brown hair. She doesn't dare look lower, to the swollen belly where the baby's heart is beating robust, insistent, persevering in its endless exhausting pattering like a god-freaking-damned hummingbird. Fighting so desperately, so tirelessly to stay alive.

And still—

—she doesn't care. She makes it to obvious to Hayley, even if Hayley won't even look at her. She says, teeth clenched so tight her jaw cracks, "I'm going to assume you knew who you were going to bed with, didn't you?" She's exposing herself. Opening herself raw. Who-the-fuck-even-cares-at-this-point. "I mean, you had met Klaus. You knew who he was. You knew that he wouldn't hesitate to massacre your twelve hybrid friends as soon as you told him they were plotting to bury him in concrete. I mean, didn't your whole plan to resuscitate your parents depended on the fact that, yes, of course Klaus would kill them all without breaking a sweat? You did know he's the bad guy so… you're gonna have to suck it up."

Careless bitches end up dead. And really, how unexpectedly _innocent_ of Hayley. How did she expect it would end, going to bed with him? Did she think that the Devil doesn't charge you for a _really_ good fuck? That there are no consequences to having just a taste?

"You made your bed, Hayley," Caroline condemns, like it's her place_. You lied on it_. _Now you have to bleed on it, too_.

* * *

.-.

"Caroline, please—"

"Is this where you've been, Tyler?" she asks, the bitter smile quickly morphing into a joyless laugh. "Is this how you're finding yourself a wolf family? I mean, not to poke holes—but, I'm sorry to say, it isn't _your_ baby."

How _cruel_ of her. How pathetic, too—that she doesn't even know who she is trying to hurt here. Tyler. The pregnant teenage wolf girl. Herself.

And so he gets angry enough to shout in her face. "Bullshit!" No more begging and pleading, then. "You're acting like a complete heartless bitch because Klaus went to bed with someone else, so don't you dare get all _wounded_, like it's _my_ fault that you fell for him."

And oh, if only she could—if only she wasn't _above_—

She narrows her eyes and crosses her arms over her chest, all defences up. "You know you're dead, right?" It _kills_ her, just thinking about it. She loved Tyler so _much_. So hard. She held onto that love so desperately. "You're helping her run. He will not let you go this time."

You dumbass. You're helping her again. She's using you again. She's sentencing you to death again, and there you go. You pathetic spineless _pup_.

"Well, maybe if you ask him _nicely_." Straight and with unflinching wolf claws, squarely to the jugular.

This time, Caroline slaps him—

—and how bad the palm of her hand itches afterwards. She relishes the sting. She feels almost proud because fuck _you_, Tyler; fuck Klaus, fuck Hayley. Fuck their judgements and their accusations. It's the brave little rebel wolf girl that opened her legs for the big bad guy and got herself into such a terrible, bloody variation of a cautionary tale. Caroline resisted. You know how hard that is, resisting when you know that resistance is futile? But you still resist, until every inch of your skin is hurting and peeling under the weight of _wanting_ and regretting. So—

"Fuck you."

It's Hayley who replies, her voice a shivering thread. "Let's get out of here."

Oh, yes. Please do.

* * *

.-.

"Caroline," he pleads, _again_; the red blotches of her fingers imprinted on his cheek have already faded off. "He's going to kill her."

She turns her face to look at the girl one last time—don't you see, Caroline, she is just a girl—and thinks it ironic, the silvery moonshine glittering in her thick, wet eyelashes. Her eyes are glued to the floor still. In utter shame. Caroline doesn't want to laugh. Caroline wants to cry, but—

Every word is a condemnation, Caroline knows. A sentence ruled onto her soul and, why is she laughing? Why can't she stop? Doesn't she realize? She is _just_ a girl, eighteen, and he is going to _kill_ her, grab the child and rip out her heart. But still Caroline laughs—_perhaps he'll eat the child_. Indifference, its grip so cold her black blood freezes in her veins, rings bitter as it gurgles up her throat, and she dares whip her hair like a punishment.

"I'm sorry," she dictates, the door a fracture of a second away from slamming in their wide-eyed faces. "I don't care."

* * *

.-.

What the spiteful little bitch with the holier-than-thou attitude doesn't know—and how goddamn _stupid_ of her, by the way—is that they aren't running from Klaus. She might have been dumb enough to get for herself such a pathetic staring role in this twisted bloody after-school-special—

—but what does Hayley even know? The last time she stepped a foot in a school she was a month past fifteen, already cursed, already ticking down in the cheapest notepad she could find, the first name of her personal body count.

It was an accident, though. Mom. Dad. It was an _accident_.You can just throw her on the streets just because this _once_—

She didn't even like the taste of bourbon after that first mouthful. But who doesn't squint and squeak and still push it down their virgin throats, at the tender age of fifteen and a day? She wasn't even drunk. It was just one shot of bourbon. It wasn't her fault. The brakes weren't working properly, she had warned dad, but—please, please, _please_. She is just a girl, okay? She isn't a monster. She isn't a—

It is not her fault. It's a _curse_.

That's what the spiteful little bitch doesn't understand.

Little sweet _perfect_ Caroline.

Hayley was running for her fucking life when Klaus saved her that night from Katherine's lackey. She did what she had to do. She's been running for her life since the first moon she bent and break, snapping in pieces every bone in her body, and for fuck's sake, Klaus's been dead as disco for a fucking thousand years. How was she supposed to even imagine—?

Tyler has run for his life, too. It was only what, two weeks? A month perhaps? But he knows like she knows and like the spiteful little _perfect _bitch will never have the pleasure of discovering—

—there is no fucking point in running.

Hayley learned that a long time before she met Klaus. In the world where she comes from, where, guess what? There are monsters a lot damn worse than Klaus. Klaus—

Hayley wants to laugh. Klaus is a puppet in the witches' bloodied hands and the witches, they are in shackles. Their lives are running out. New Orleans is a hot mess and Klaus is too busy chasing his own forked tail to pack a suitcase and go back to whatever creepy castle in Transylvania he ran away from. He'd do good in removing himself from the picture, but he won't, of course. Not now that Hayley is ready to pop.

Oh, she isn't running.

Hayley is on a chase. Like the prowling wolf she is. She's on a mission. Come on, how dumb you think she is? What would be the point in running to the one place in the world where every streetlamp and every darkened corner and every tree top have eyes that he has installed to lurk and hover and watch His Lady?

This ridiculous little insignificant town is the place where Klaus will follow her more gladly. This is the place where he will not dare—

The child will be safe here.

Hayley will be safe here.

When her guiltless child is torn from her womb, Klaus will not dare rip out her bleeding heart. Not if little sweet _perfect _Caroline is watching.

* * *

.-.

Caroline knows.

This is why, after much struggle, Caroline slams the door of her dorm room in their faces.

* * *

.-.

But then, _oh_—

Oh, _no_.

The scream pierces through the night, deep and raw and shattered.

* * *

.-.

Caroline feels the paper-thin walls of her room trembling beneath the weight of her back. She sees the lamp swaying from the ceiling. Elena gasps loudly and covers her mouth with her hand. April rounds her pretty blue eyes.

Hayley is screaming only a few feet away from the elevator. Doorknobs are turning. Feet are stepping out in to the hallway.

Tyler watches, and for a second he does nothing. He swallows the lump in his throat, and quickly circles his strong arm around her shoulders, supports her weight and the weight of the child against his strong chest. Locks his gaze on every intruder, every curious spectator that is looking worriedly at the pregnant girl, so obviously in pain.

He commands to each one of them. "Go back inside your rooms. Nothing is going on here."

They all turned on their feet, empty-eyed. Ignorant and uncaring. Meanwhile, the pearl-coloured moonshine seeps in through the window of the room, and Caroline looks outside, casts her eyes skyward to the full moon hovering above the tree tops. Has he followed them here? For a second she entertains the silly thought that perhaps Hayley is just turning. The full moon is calling. The wolves are howling in the wild. Caroline doesn't know or care to find out how that works for a pregnant werewolf, so maybe—perhaps she is only getting ready to transform. Every bone in her body is breaking like brittle chopsticks even though Caroline can't _hear_ the deaf quiet noises beneath the piercing screeching of her scream—

—until she goes quiet, and then—

—so much for hoping for Hayley's bones to break.

Blood and water sloshes against the cheap wasted carpet, and they all can hear—they all hold their breaths at the same time. They all understand, almost as if by magic, that everything is going according to plan.

This is someone's design, isn't it? This is how it begins.

The wolf bitch giving birth Klaus's demon spawn tonight, of all nights.

In Caroline's freaking dorm room.

.-.

—

**Tbc.**

**Thanks for reading, guys! I hope that you liked it. I'm sorry if it was confusing at times, but this fic doesn't want to be written any other way, apparently. I'll try to get it to behave in future chapters ;) Drop me a line if you have any comments and, even if you hated it, just please let me thank you **_**so much**_** for giving it a chance! That means a lot to me, it really does.**

**Next****: Klaus's child is born, and someone's design is set in motion.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Hi guys, I'm sorry this chapter took so long, but I'm been feeling a bit unwell lately, and I couldn't concentrate on putting words together. It isn't much, the chapter, but I hope that you won't hate it too bad. To those of you who like the story and want to read more, thank you for being so kind to let me know, that means a lot to me. To those of you who were disappointed (if you're reading this) and aren't interested, I apologize for letting you down.**

**Once again, thank you all for reading. I hope you enjoy the chapter!**

* * *

.-.

The stench of blood is overwhelming.

Hayley's eyes flutter closed with every breath she tries to take. She exhales, lengthily and pitifully. Sometimes it stops. Each time, after a few seconds of complete absence of breath, and a heartbeat slowing down so terrifyingly fast, Caroline is almost certain. This is it. She's dying. She's practically dead. It's over.

The child hasn't been born at all, and Hayley is _dead_.

But then—

—Hayley's eyes flutter open one more time, and so it begins again. The same old, tattered song. Such a melancholic tune. The laboured breathing. The spasmodic contortions of pain. The blood pouring out—it smells like a feast, but look at the little wolf. She is just a girl. She is dying. But look at her. She soldiers on through the pain every time, heroically. Doesn't complain once about her fate or the forbidden life inside of her that is killing her slowly, torturously.

It is admirable, deep down—

Elena paces around the room, from one corner to the opposite one; her fingers shake around the phone and she insists, at least once every five seconds. "We have to call an ambulance. We have to take you to the hospital."

Each time she speaks, though, Hayley miraculously gathers enough strength to shake her head, feebly attempt (and fail) to pull herself up, leaning on her forearms on Elena's bed as if she can just stand up and physically fight two vampires and a hybrid while bleeding out to the last inch of her life. Every time, her breathing clots and gurgles loudly, and her throat coughs up a tiny wretched whimper. Always the same words. "No. No. You can't. They're coming."

_They're coming_.

They're coming—

It sounds gloomier than the prospect of Hayley's death, and of her child's death, right here in Caroline's stupid little dorm room. While they all watch and do nothing. Because—

_They're coming_.

* * *

.-.

"I'm calling Meredith," Elena decides, incapable of handling the horror one second longer. She marches out of the room, wielding her cell phone like a handgun. She won't let Hayley stop her this time, and damn _it_, there's only so much pacing and hair-pulling a vampire can stand before hyperventilation becomes a real issue.

Hayley, surprisingly—

She doesn't protest this time. It seems like she doesn't mind a doctor helping her give birth to her monster baby; she just wants to stay right here where she is. Dying. Painfully, Caroline can only assume. Because _they're coming_. It's okay if an actual doctor comes too, to try and save her life and the life of her child—for how little long Klaus might grant them, if Hayley survives the labour. _If_ what she said was true.

That Klaus wanted her dead.

Well—

Caroline doesn't quite just believe that, you see. In spite of the silvery moonshine reflecting thick and wet from the girl's long eyelashes, the tears pending on the edges of her eyes. Caroline _wants_ to believe. _He's going to kill her_, they said, again and again and how can she believe—?

That Klaus is the monster that everyone _else_ fears. That he has no conscience. No mercy or compassion. That he would ruthlessly murder the mother of his child can you believe that? For whoever knows what reason, as soon as she's done pushing.

Maybe that is why Hayley isn't fighting for her life.

* * *

.-.

April rolls about on Elena's desk chair, back and forth, pushing herself with the lower part of her back, her hands fisted around her knees. Her teeth clatter and she shakes her head almost hysterically, because _no, no no no_. Yes, she took that first aid course in sophomore year, but how can they expect her—? She can't save her. She can't help. She can't do anything. She's only human. She's not even eighteen yet, and _look at this mess_. Why is she even friends with these people? Why is she here? She can do _nothing_ to help. They are all _vampires_, for heaven's sake. Can they do _something_—?

The thought strikes her like a burst of lightning and she opens her big pretty eyes, wide and terrified as she spins around on her chair to look at Tyler, her pretty woollen skirt fisted in white-knuckled handfuls inside her clenched hands.

"Can't you give her your blood?"

She knows what happened at prom. She doesn't remember much of it, but she _knows_. Rebekah never lies to her. It wasn't even _her_ prom because this is the town she moved back in for some reason, little orphan April whose father committed suicide and mass-murder simultaneously. This is her life now, and senior prom sounded really cool, you know? Until Elena—

—it wasn't Elena, though; they all have explained, not _really_—

—and she almost died, again; but Rebekah gave April her blood and she saved her and now April knows everything. She remembers things that happen now. She has a pretty vervain bracelet that Matt and Jer gave her as a gift. So she _remembers_. She knows what these people are, and she knows that they can save humans by feeding them their blood. So why isn't Tyler—?

The question¸ _can't you give her your blood_, catches him by surprise. He hadn't even thought—

He doesn't even think about it before he growls like the wolf he is, dropping his two sets of fangs and taking his wrist to his lips. Forcefully, he presses the tender flesh to the awaiting bite of his monster mouth—

"No…"

Hayley's weak, extinguishing voice cuts like a knife through the silence of the room, and clenching her eyes shut, Caroline crosses her arms over her chest and turns on her feet, incapable of waiting one second longer before walking towards the door. She doesn't go out, but she doesn't need. The door is ajar, open enough that she can see Elena dialling madly on her phone at the other end of the corridor. Can't she locate Meredith? Or is she already on her way, and Elena is trying Damon to reach Damon? Because that would be _exactly_ what they need right now. Damon. Showing up in the fray with his smartass face and his asshole smirk, and acting like the complete _jackass_ that he is in the middle of the crisis.

Ugh.

It's only fortunate that Hayley's whimpering pulls Caroline out of her rightful anger at Damon and the entire mess their lives are right now.

"No…" Hayley is repeating, _no no no_; her voice a pained, strenuous but constant whimper.

It's hard to ignore. No matter how frequently Caroline averts her eyes, how urgently she looks towards the corridor instead, for some reason unable leave the room. Just in case, she knows. It's _her_ room, isn't it? So, _just in case_.

She is waiting too.

_They're coming_.

How pathetic is that?

At least Hayley has the guts to choose _death_ over what could happen if Tyler feeds her his blood, and isn't that commendable? Best case scenario—who the hell even knows? Is it better to die during transition, bleeding out of every orifice in your body? Or is it better to become—?

Tyler has certainly no doubts. He sits on the blood-drenched sheets without flinching and grabs Hayley's hand in his, tenderly but firm. He waits for her to open her eyes before he whispers: "There's Katherine now—"

She closes her eyes immediately, like the silvery pale shade of the moonlight hurts her, and she shakes her head again. Her voice is low and feeble, but her words don't tremble at all when she insists, "No." Her eyes shot open like prompted by a spring, wide and bloodshot and almost mad, and Caroline can see her pulling frailly at Tyler's hand. "Just make sure Rebekah takes her."

* * *

.-.

Hayley should be healing.

They all know this.

She is supernatural. She is a werewolf. Not as fast as a vampire would heal, yeah; but she should be healing. If Tyler forced the blood down her throat—there's no guarantee that it would work. She isn't healing because she isn't _supposed_ to be healing, and how fucked up is that? Magic; surely. The counterpoint to the silver lining of an expecting wolf bitch: you do not turn under the full moon, and isn't that a blessing? But, no, _you fool_. If there is no price, there is no reward. You do not turn, you do not heal.

You bleed out your child.

And if she dies with Tyler's blood in her veins. If they dare go to find Katherine—

(—but they can't. They _can't_. Klaus can't know—)

Hayley would rather die, it seems. And isn't that ennobling, when she was so desperately bartering for her life only a few hours ago? Or perhaps—perhaps she knows she will heal, naturally. When the time is right. When the demon baby is out of her. _Obviously_ Klaus's flesh and blood, in case any incredulous soul harboured any doubts. What else can it be, already trying to kill his own mother _in utero_?

She's one shallow breath away from death, and yet Caroline's rocklike heart doesn't soften, bitter thoughts spinning madly in her head, driving her insane. She even rolls her eyes, undignified, and moves away from the door and back into the room, her heart constricted into stone because _what if Hayley became immortal? What if she were to live forever?_

She catches Tyler's desperate eyes, the steely expression in her face unflinching. "Klaus's baby momma would be sired to you—" And Klaus would _never_ forgive such defiance, would he? Tyler making hybrids; others like them but belonging to _him_— "That'd make for some interesting family dinners, don't you think?"

Tyler's eyes harden like frozen steel, but he doesn't dignify Caroline's jab with a reply. Hayley's chest keeps on heaving, almost unnoticeably. Caroline just watches, her breath catching around a mouthful of venom that she swallows without the need of biting her own tongue. She used to be this crass, before; when she was younger; she used to be so insensitive—so rude and entitled.

_Just in case he's listening_, she tells herself.

But it's not him—

"Well, we do always save a place for you at the table, Caroline, in case you're curious," a familiar, annoying, too much expected voice speaks suddenly from behind her. "Each day we all wonder, is today the day when Caroline will stop acting like a childish, self-entitled jealous _bitch_ and finally come to join our party in New Orleans?"

She closes her eyes and breathes in deeply before she opens them again. When she does, after the whoosh whisper of someone flashing, Rebekah is already sitting in front of the bed, wearing jeans and a remarkably plain sleeveless cotton shirt and… latex gloves.

She has the cheek to twist her neck and look at Caroline all haughty over her shoulder, smirking almost in amusement. "I suppose today is not that day, is it, Caroline?"

* * *

.-.

It's been a thousand years.

A thousand freaking years, since Rebekah did this for the last time, and, truth is, she didn't do it that _many_ times.

On the bright side, though? The women her mother used to assist so diligently during their pregnancy and labour, the women that Rebekah used to help and care for, while she learned the trade, so as to one day inherit her mother's role as healer and apothecary of the village—

—well, Rebekah was born and raised in a settlement of werewolves, wasn't she?

Let her brother handle the kind-eyed, vampire-blood-feeder doctor; send her on her merry way back home, before she sees too much. Before she knows the things that will cost her, believe this, her very insignificant human life.

The bleeding wolf bitch?

That, Rebekah can handle. It's nothing she hasn't seen before.

* * *

.-.

"You're going to deliver the baby?"

This time, Rebekah doesn't bother turning her face around to look at Caroline. She has exchanged pleasantries with April and not so nicely invited Tyler to please step away and refrain from touching anything with his dirty messy paws. But right now, she is focused on the task at hand. Keep Hayley awake and breathing, gathering just the little strength required by a werewolf to push only when Rebekah tells her she absolutely needs to, while Rebekah digs the baby out of her entrails, with the same grace and savoir-faire and calmness she usually employs to dig beating, still bleeding hearts out of people's heaving chests.

"Isn't it obvious, Caroline?" she asks, her words accompanied by a literal grunt that stumbles out of her throat, a mixture of exertion and concentration and sheer annoyance. "As opposed to you and your ridiculous friends, I wasn't born yesterday. Women in the tenth century weren't as utterly useless as you are today. Surely you must know, not everything in life can be done through your stupid phone."

If only she weren't certain Hayley's blood would end up splattered right in her face, Caroline would pull Rebekah's hair so hard she'd break her neck. Or die trying.

Good way as any other to blow off some steam and keep her thoughts from wandering into dangerous territory.

Or else—

* * *

.-.

The baby girl wakes up to life, crying her little lungs out, just as the first rays of dawn begin to seep spectrally through the cracks of the window's blinds. The full moon is gone for the month. The windows are half-closed so that Hayley can rest. Most of the room remains under the cover of darkness as the new mother, now healing as a true monster is meant to, finally manages to sit up on Elena's bed. Just straight enough to hand the baby away, pass it to Rebekah as a child shares a toy. Rebekah, once again, doesn't hesitate to hold the child, and carefully nests her on the pouch she has fitted over her stomach.

Enthralled, she caresses the baby's head with the palm of her hand, supporting the weight of the pouch over her arm to press the baby closer to her chest, let the laggard, dull rhythm of her dead heart lull the girl to sleep. Thick tears of happiness and terror have welled up in her eyes, but she doesn't let them fall. She sniffs them away and smiles strangely sympathetic, catching Hayley's big brown eyes with a firm nod. "She'll be alright. I promise."

Hayley returns the nod with an almost imperceptible twist of her chin, her fingers still clenching and unclenching rhythmically over the set of clean sheets she has tucked around herself. "Yeah," she breathes, still pale even as new blood runs faster through her veins again. She manages a small, mindless gesture of her hand towards the child. "How are you going to—?"

Rebekah smiles, her hands careful but strong as iron around the baby. "We have everything we need."

Nik had wanted a compelled wet nurse he could safely and quickly be rid off as soon as her services weren't needed anymore. But it wasn't safe, Rebekeah knew. It wasn't a good idea to get the baby so attached to a stranger that would simply vanish into a pile of bloodless flesh one day, leaving no trace behind after being served for a Sunday family dinner. No—

Rebekah will take good care of her. There are advantages to being born in the twenty-first century after all. She doesn't need to give birth herself to be a _true_ mother. Not even in these first stages she barely remembers—Henrik was only two years young than her. But she has everything she needs. The baby will be safe. She will care for her and feed her and protect her.

"How are you going to name her?"

Hayley's question surprises them all. Rebekah frowns in confusion. Elena snaps her neck around to look at Caroline so fast that they all can hear it crack. Tyler clenches his fists in fury. Even April stirs in her sleep, but after a rugged cough, she continues to sleep mildly peacefully on Caroline's bed. Caroline, howver—

Caroline turns on her feet and walks out of the room.

* * *

.-.

"She doesn't even get to choose the name?"

Rebekah stops on her tracks to cast one dirty look in her direction, before almost immediately starting to walk again in the direction of the elevator, her back straight as a pole, the baby sleeping against her chest, unperturbed.

"Why should she? She doesn't want the child. She never did." She rolls her shoulders, and the baby sways a bit in her nest. "She just wants her life. That's why she came here."

Right. Kind of. The problem with Hayley is that she can't be compelled, and she knows far too much. She's a liability, and nobody except the Lockwood pup gives a damn about her in the whole wide world. Who could care a lick if she died? No one. And Nik, well—he doesn't like loose ends, you see. So it's all a matter of time, and they have a lot more than time than Hayley does. They all know: they will regret it if they let her live, sooner rather than later. She _must_ be killed, but Nik, well—the thing is—

He's acting like a complete lovesick _fool_.

Isn't that ironic? Nik of all choleric mass-murdering monsters, waiting patiently in the car so that he doesn't upset the girl he fancies. Because he's lied to her, and hurt her feelings, and disappointed her pride. How beautifully tragic and poetic and _pathetic_. She can't help the evil smile curling on her lips, as she turns on her feet to look at Caroline before she even calls for the elevator.

"He's outside, you know? In case you want to talk to him." Caroline crosses her arms over her stomach, balls her fists, taps her foot on the cheap, hideous carpet and doesn't say a word. Rebekah rolls her eyes to the ceiling, as if annoyed, but insists with a chipper tone. "Want me to pass on a message?"

Caroline scoffs loudly, regardless of the sleeping baby. Her bitterness moulds into a dry puff of air that scratches all the way up her throat. "Yeah, you can tell him to go to hell."

This time, Rebekah rolls her eyes all the way through. "You know, one of these days you're going to outgrow this silly tantrum of yours, Caroline. Yes, my brother impregnated some nobody wolf bitch on accident, but, you know, that's hardly the worst thing you're going to have to forgive, is it?"

_Have to_—

"Have to forgive?" Caroline's steely expression hardens even more as she clenches her teeth. "I don't _have_ to forgive anything. I don't give a _crap_ that your brother—"

"Yes, Caroline. You don't care that Nik slept with Hayley or that she just popped _his_ baby. That's why you hooked up with Stefan for no good reason except to dig yourself deeper into your anger. That's why you're acting like a callous bitch right now. Because you don't give a _crap_. "

She almost raises her voice. She only notices half a second too late, the tiny breaths of the little baby pressed against her chest. Barely moving. Not seeing. Not even hearing yet, perhaps. But alive and so _fragile_, Caroline's petty fit of temper hardly seems to matter at all in comparison. Except because they all know that—

—and how messed-up is that, really?—

—Caroline is the best chance the baby of not becoming a rotten monster just like the rest of them.

Rebekah knows—her family—

They're stuck with bratty, entitled, childish goody-two-shoes Caroline Forbes. It may take him five centuries or more of endless bloodshed and merciless cruelty, but Nik always gets what he wants. Or way or another. And he wants Caroline. But the fates have put a clock on him this time, isn't that fun?

If only so that the new life breathing against Rebekah's chest can be saved, and allowed to extinguish her human days in peace, one sundown at a time.

It seems, the fates have decreed—

—the Mikaelson family no longer has forever.

Not that Caroline gives a damn, you see. She extends her fingers over her hipbones, and juts her chin defiantly, her morning, sleepless eyes glaring at Rebekah with murder. "You can go to hell too."

Oh, well—

_Not today_, Rebekah nods, reaching back with her hand to press the button and call the elevator. _Caroline isn't coming with them today._

But soon—

* * *

.-.

She sits cautiously on the passenger seat, moving slowly, cradling the pouch in the crook of her arm so it doesn't bounce. She doesn't want to disturb the baby with the awkward movement as she bows her back and bends her knees. She's usually more than graceful and agile in her movements, but it's not safe, she knows. She's been a surrogate mother for ten minutes, and look at the gigantic mess Rebekah Mikaelson is, already screwing it up.

She isn't supposed to be carrying a baby while sitting in the front seat of a car, she knows; even if the driver is the original hybrid and he has super-powerful instincts and reflexes. The slightest bump, a sudden skid, and—

Nik doesn't even look at the baby, and it's hard for Rebekah to focus car safety right now. Not to mention, they have to leave, even if it's not advisable to move infants this young, she knows, but—

Nik doesn't even _look_ at her.

He keeps his eyes on the deserted parking lot, moving from row of cheap student cars to row of cheap student cars; and he doesn't even ask. He doesn't say a word. But, of course, as usual, he doesn't really need to. Rebekah knows what he needs to know.

"She's healing," she whispers. He would ne able to hear her even if she just breathed through her mouth, her lips shaping each sound mutely over the unvoiced words. The silence is that thick. "If you don't want any resistance, you should go up now. Your stray dog is there, of course. He might put up a fight, but I don't think Caroline would even frown if you walked in there and ripped Hayley's heart out of her ribcage. Except for the extra set of ruined, bloodstained sheets, perhaps."

At last reacting, he twists his lips into a grimace. Like just hearing about Caroline's anger at the world is too much of an inconvenience. He sighs, too—and finally turns his face to look at her, his tired eyes dropping almost lazily to the living and breathing bundle in her arms.

It's just a newborn baby, undistinguishable from any other specimen of its kind. A tiny mass of soft flesh and reddened, wrinkled skin. They still can't see what colour the eyes are. There's a wisp of brownish hair coating the miniature skull that will fall off in a few weeks, before even. There is no way that any of them can see themselves yet, in the little human baby cradled in Rebekah's arms.

With some luck, or by some miracle, perhaps none of them will ever share much of _anything_ with the little human baby cradled in her arms.

It draws a sad trembling smile on her lips, and she finds herself nodding in an inexplicable gesture of reassurance when Nik raises his eyes to look at her, a slight frown creasing his forehead. "It's a girl," she breathes, a painful knot tying in her throat, and pulling inward from somewhere deep in her chest.

He, once again, doesn't react in any noticeable away, except by simply dropping his eyes to glance at the baby one more time. He's still frowning when he speaks, his eyes glued to Rebekah's pouch. "She's clever. Hayley, I mean. Coming here."

_Perhaps_, Rebekah thinks. She's only putting off the inevitable. "What are you going to do with her?"

Hayley not only knows about the child. She not only knows about the witches. About Marcel. About the war brewing, seconds away from the point of combustion, down in the haunted, rotten city of New Orleans. Hayley also knows about Caroline. She knows about Mystic Falls. And if they let her live—

Rebekah holds her arms over her stomach, leaning back on the backrest of her seat and holding the baby in her arms. She is weightless as a feather. She is _so_ fragile, so vulnerable and breakable. Should they storm up the stairs and rip out the heart of her mother, for her own good? For the sake of her safety?

Should they just take her like it's theirs, and raise her as one of their own?

Rolling his shoulders and breathing loudly through the nose, he starts the car and doesn't look back. "I'll keep eyes on her."

Rebekah nods, understanding. "She won't stay in Mystic Falls, though."

She won't stay in any place. In the long run, none of them knows much about Hayley, but that one thing they do know.

She won't ever stay in just one place.

Little vagabond wolf girl.

* * *

.-.

She found Katherine while running from Klaus.

She found Klaus while running from Katherine.

She found Caroline while running from Klaus, again.

But what they can never know—

She found this world while running from her own.

* * *

.-.

She's clever, he will grant her that.

Not clever enough to keep herself from ending up in the kind of situations in which her little silly life is hanging by a thread, but clever enough to just hang in there, only that extra second needed to jump from one mess into the next.

She hasn't just left, he takes it.

She isn't just running. She hasn't given up.

The child—

Call him a man in transition, a monster in transition into the echoes of the man inside, but—

He's sitting this one out.

_For now_.

* * *

.-.

From the front door of the rundown building, she watches them go.

She shifts on her feet and stares at the sun-rising sky, as his black SUV turns the corner at the end of the street and disappears. She wonders against herself, if maybe he's caught her silhouette in the rear mirror of his fancy car as he drove away. If maybe he was even looking. If maybe he was waiting as he was leaving—

With his sister and his newborn baby girl.

To do the Devil knows what evil. Back to his new life. To a world of his own. To the throne he's so pitifully scrambling for, rumour has it. Leaving the usual mess of blood and fury and putrid anger in his way.

Caroline doesn't care—

"Good riddance," she mutters under her breath, when she can't see him anymore. Each tiny sound trembles weakly as the words leave her mouth, crushed by the weight of nausea and denial. She tastes blood—that _hard_ she bites down her tongue, not believing a thought that crosses through her head.

—

**Tbc.**

* * *

**Thanks for reading, guys. I hope that you liked it, didn't think it was too boring, and weren't too disappointed by the lack of KC interaction. This will be remedied soon, I promise. ****Next:** **The originals come up with a plan and Rebekah returns to Mystic Falls to execute it.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Hello guys! **

**Here is the next chapter. I'm sorry updates aren't so frequent with this story, but I'm doing my best here. Real life is sort of kicking my ass lately, so I would like to take advantage of this author's note to really thank you all for your support and your interest in the story. It really means a lot to me, so thank you, truly. :::hugs::: I hope you won't be too disappointed.**

* * *

.-.

"Well, I suppose my days of wine and roses are over now, aren't they?"

The royal _bitch_ opens the front door like she owns the house. The big colonial mansion and—well, _in a way_, Rebekah figures. She's no expert in the little history of this little town after the tenth century, but she knows when and how the Lockwood family obtained most of their state a century and a half ago. Once they (thought they) burned to ashes the little cosy community of little town vampires who established here over the eighteen-sixties. Funny, she thinks, how life operates in circles, but most of the time you need to have been alive for at least a millennium to notice. The Mystic Falls vampires thought the land was theirs. The werewolves took it away, but, in fact, the werewolves—

—for them it was a reconquest.

It makes Rebekah all the more confident as she raises her eyebrows to look at Katherine as disdainfully as she can, relishing for the first time in months the extra lightness in her shoulders. Wilfully, she chases away the constant heavy worry, because for the first time in three months, the baby—

—she can't think about how much she misses her right now. Instead—

"I'm trying to figure out the catch," she scorns, wrinkling her nose like it smells funny inside the house she hasn't been allowed to step a foot into. "You of all people choosing to be _human_—"

Katherine, of course, doesn't let her get away with that. "You're just bitter," she pouts, mockingly, the gesture brimming with malice and barely-repressed desperation. "Because you're still _dead_. Is that why you're here, little sis? Tell me, how many seconds do I have left, before your brother shows up behind you to burn down the house?"

It's kind of admirable, how she hasn't asked, _how did you find out_? Rebekah knows Katherine wouldn't even consider the thought of begging for her sorry life, and it's kind of a pity, that that is not the reason why she's come here. But still—

"You don't have to worry," she assures, mock-smiling, deceitfully pleasant. "Nik is otherwise occupied right now. He doesn't know what happened to you and, be at ease, he isn't going to find out."

Katherine gets extra points for not reacting in any way. "And I should believe you because…?"

"Talked to Elijah lately?" But _look_—

It's a complete and utter _joy_ to see the smug expression tremble in the creases of Katherine's nose, even if just for a second before she recovers and masks all traces of emotion under the heavy golden foils of bored, forever-unimpressed sassiness. It's brief, but it makes Rebekah gloat with morbid satisfaction.

"He's spent the last five hundred years sulking under a very heavy coat of fake dignity because of that fool you seduced so you could hang yourself and become a complete evil bitch for all eternity," she grins, genuinely happy that she's winning this first round. "Call him. I am sure as _death_ that he'll be delighted to know his dearest _Katerina_ is back among the living."

* * *

.-.

"I wasn't sure you'd come," he says as soon as she sits in front of his, the tumbler sliding idly over the wet table from one hand to the other. He keeps his eyes buried under the cast of his long blond eyelashes, his chin tucked into his chest.

He looks the perfect poster boy for _ashamed_, and it makes her want to laugh.

_I wasn't sure you'd come_, he admits, in what is possibly just a show of humility that does little to conceal the familiar, all-encompassing arrogance.

So why is she—?

_Curiosity killed the cat, Caroline_. She's been telling herself that for over a year, now. But _this time_—this time is different.

"Well, you mentioned Matt, so I came."

She leaves the words hanging, floating in the sweat-smelling, clotted air of the bar as heavily as the echoes of the underlying insult. She's here because he said it was about Matt, her friend. Her _ex_. Yes, the same ex who found vamp-girl Caroline unnatural and scary and a tiny bit disgusting, perhaps; and then went on to see the freaking Great Wall of goddamned China with the original evil sister. But—

—you do get the point, I'm sure.

Klaus _loves_ vamp-girl Caroline, and so he gets the point, too. He raises his eyes to look at her and a little, almost shy curling of his perfectly-rehearsed dismissive smile lets her know immediately that, just as suspected, the humble posture was but a show. "Yes," he slurs, "About _that_…"

* * *

.-.

This second time, Katherine doesn't flinch. "Sure," she says, crossing her arms over her chest. "I'll call Elijah, ask him if he wants to catch up. And then I'll sit down right here like the good girl I am, and wait for your other brother, the _much_ less classy one, to come and burn me out of the house."

Ha.

Like that's ever going to happen.

The insolent Lockwood dog left Matt the house as a last safe haven for _Caroline_, doesn't Katherine know that? To give her a place where Nik couldn't ever reach her. Under normal circumstances, of course, that little fact alone would have melted the big mansion down to big heap of fuming ashes in a matter of minutes. But Nik's all about making amends in all the wrong ways, these days. So even if he learned that Katherine—

—but he _can't_. He can't know. Not yet.

"I told you already, please do keep up," Rebekah sighs, annoyed. "Nik won't find out about your beating, bleeding human little heart, pumping little human doppelganger blood through your veins." Why is she engaging Katherine, again? Oh, _right_. She rolls her eyes and blows out her breath indelicately with a click of her tongue, pulling out of the pocket of her coat the small vial of blood. "Elijah is set on the purpose of leading Niklaus to find redemption through the true love of his family. He won't let him get sidetracked from his path towards the light by getting obsessed again with his stupid lifelong plan of picking stray dogs and turning them into his big army of doom."

Isn't it… magical?

She mocks both Nik and Elijah with her derision, but Katherine pays no mind. Rebekah can see all of her little human instincts kicking in at once, and this time she doesn't feel any jealously. She has only to extend her hand, and wait for Katherine to automatically reach out and grab the vial without thinking about the dangers of doing just that.

She inspects the little tube like she hasn't seen blood before, which—well, it's funny, isn't it?

* * *

.-.

"No fucking way." No, please, let her repeat that, and be crystalline clear. "No. _Fucking_. Way."

Look at her. Look at sweet little _nice _Caroline, being all assertive. Curiously, the way she usually _only_ behaves around him, the Big Bad. She is so _not _afraid of him, that he doesn't even notice the defiance. But the swearing gives him pause, and she swallows a drink slowly, eyes narrowed but high, savouring the small victory along with the bitter twinge of the gin.

"Unfortunately, it's not your decision, Caroline," he says, placidly. He too can sound assertive, haven't you guessed? He's the original motherfucking hybrid, after all. And he does as he pleases, His Majesty. He isn't here to ask for her permission and, turns out, that _itches_. Especially on top of the fact that he is here _just_ to be upfront and keep her updated, because she didn't take it so well that he was keeping secrets the last time, about sexing up wolf bitches and impregnating them and becoming a daddy hybrid while leaving romantic voicemails in Caroline's phone.

The _nerve_.

She's _obviously_ having none of that anymore, so she insists, for good measure. "I will _not_ stand here and let you put Matt's life in danger for no reason other than—"

"—he's fallen in love with my sister?" His smile curls blatantly arrogant now, uncannily familiar in its assholery. He looks at her directly, because this fight, he has already won it a million times inside her head, and he knows that. "Well, that's the great thing about love, isn't it, Caroline? Rebekah's all proud of herself for _finally_ picking one of the good ones, and we, her family, are also happy about that. For her sake, of course."

It's a hollow-point bullet, because he is a criminal, evil, maleficent mastermind. It sinks in past her skin through the talk of love and the sacrifices we all fools make for its sake, and then it _expands_ upon entrance to damage as much tissue as it can touch. Matt's one of the good ones, and how lucky and how _proud_ Rebekah is to _finally_ have fallen for someone like him. Someone good and generous and selfless, willing to forever sacrifice himself for the sake of the Greater Good, and those he loves. Willing to become Katherine's watcher and roommate. Willing this time, for certain, to put his life on hold to protect the girl—

—because he is one of the good ones, and how _proud_ Rebekah is that she chose right this time.

Caroline however—

Go, go Caroline.

Go and dare feel _proud_ of this terrible, quicksand love that is inexorably burying each and every last ounce of your grace.

* * *

.-.

"What's this?" Katherine actually asks.

Rebekah, in sheer disbelief, has to bite down her bottom lip to keep herself from either laughing or rolling her eyes again. After a couple of seconds of heavy silence, she speaks. "It's blood," she deadpans. "_My_ blood, to be more specific. In case any of the goons my brother keeps in this town grows daring enough to start thinking for themselves and figure out what's happening."

The truth is, Nik's men are under very specific instructions. Watch over Caroline. Protect Caroline. Report back about Caroline. Hayley left town as soon as she was able to walk with a firm stride, which happened before noon on the day she gave birth. Up until today, Nik has one business in Mystic Falls. Tomorrow, he'll have two—but so far Katherine, trapped in her pretty ivory tower, is not in his radar. She will be soon, of course. But hopefully by that time, it will make little difference to any of them.

That is, if Katherine doesn't change her mind first. Which, Rebekah knows, she will. Sooner rather than later.

"I suppose the merry band of Mystic Falls do-gooders are doing their best so you don't have access to vampire blood, am I right?" She narrows her eyes, nodding towards the tight grip Katherine keeps around the vial. She gets ready to strike, because _seriously_. "Not that you _want_ vampire blood, now that you are embracing your newly recovered humanity."

The way Katherine refuses to unglue her eyes from the blood, it's almost like she can't hear a word Rebekah is saying. "Why?" she asks at last, transfixed. "You hate me."

_Well_—

Katherine is not looking at her, but Rebekah still offers a very convincing grimace of slightly-disgusted indifference. "Consider it a peace offering for the sake of what would happen to my family, if Elijah were to find your drained carcass on the floor of Niklaus's headquarters down in Louisiana," she shrugs. "And take it as a proof of my good will, that I didn't yank you out of the house as soon as you reached out for the vial, and simply snapped your neck to be done with the problem."

Katherine frowns at that, looking up as if genuinely intrigued. "Why didn't you?"

_Well_—

"That wouldn't have worked great either for the future of my family, would it? Besides," she twists her lips maliciously, her words dripping with ill-intended poison, "Humanity is not for you, Katherine. How much longer can you stand the overwhelming vulnerability that constantly haunts you now? You've been running for your life for too long to all of a sudden be happy about becoming perishable like this. How long can you survive like this, trapped in this gilded cage for your own safety?"

Of course, Rebekah spent twice as much as Katherine running for her life. But—

Katherine is _still_ running. As a human, again. So it's different.

Rebekah was ready to give it a rest, for good. Katherine is the first Petrova doppelganger. Being human is not a risk worth taking, or the rightful course went wrong under a curse. She was born solely to die, literally; and being dead was the only thing she was ever any good at.

And yet—

The hardest Rebekah tries, the less effective her taunting grows.

She's losing this round. Katherine's face is a peaceful mask of suntanned porcelain, and the bad intentions glimmering in her hazed, hazelnut look only make her look more unbreakable. She even smirks, slowly and deliberately, "Well, I have Matt to keep me company. Such a good _boy_, with such a kind heart. He's all about second chances, did you know that?"

Matt is one of the good ones, yes, but—

Oh, Rebekah will be _damned_ if she lets Katherine get to her with such a basic taunt. Human, weak, so impossibly-easy-to-kill Katherine. Rebekah is untouchable, by comparison. So she holds her chin up and squares her shoulders and exhales as if bored out of her wits. "I do know Matt, yes" she smiles, sweet and fake, but also _true_, because she's been alive for a thousand years, and the best two months of her eternal life, she spent with Matt, seeing the world like every detail of it all was brand new to her eyes. "As I'm sure you've guessed, I'm actually here to see him."

No, she didn't come here to give Katherine her blood. She didn't come here to get a rise out of her because of all the horrible vampires in the world, it was _Katherine_ that got the cure that Rebekah so desperately wanted—

No, she knows now. Elijah is right. There are other paths that lead to _true_ humanity. Humanity is more, it is larger than a bleeding heart and a racing pulse. There are things that matter most in life than having or lacking an expiration date, so every second counts (or doesn't). That is just modern, twenty-first century crap, and Katherine, _human _Katherine—she is simply an errand that Rebekah had to run while on her mission of appeal, convince, and _beg_ if she must. But not to Katherine.

She didn't come here to bargain with her.

She has to see Matt and—

Katherine smirks, knowingly and evilly. "Well, he hasn't arrived from work yet, but I'm sure he'll be here soon. I'd ask you to wait inside, but—"

Unlike Katherine, unlike Matt—

—Rebekah is an undead monster, and she isn't allowed to come in.

So the door slams right in her face, before she can return the scornful grin, and assure the maleficent little evil _bitch_ that she will happily wait for him outside.

* * *

.-.

"Your friend will not be in danger," is as far as Klaus is willing to go with his promises these days.

Clever, Caroline thinks, that he will admit without words the crime she never thought she'd had to think about forgiving him for. Lying. Pretending. Making promises of everlasting love without disclosing all the nasty cards he was hiding up his sleeve. She always thought he was honest in his monstrosity, but then he lied. And now, _your friend will not be in danger_ is all he has to offer.

Caroline wants to laugh in his face.

Like she could ever _trust_—

"Your mess," she aims her arrow, the bow pulled so tight her fingers are burning with the strain, "your _life_ is not Matt's problem. If Rebekah cares for him, she will not let him—"

"Rebekah cares for the child," his voice rises, almost angry at last, vibrating unpleasant as he clicks his tongue disdainfully. "Rebekah understands her duties towards her family. She knows that Matt's involvement will only be a subterfuge. The child is _her_ responsibility."

Well, that would be the last thing, wouldn't it?

That Matt would have to—

She balls her fists, and crosses her feet over her ankles to suppress the urge to straight kick his shins beneath the table. "Shouldn't the child be _your_ responsibility, though? I mean, she is _your_ child, not Rebekah's."

Why does Caroline care, anyway? Why is she even talking about this? What is she doing here? Why doesn't she just get up, spin on her feet and turn her back on him, once and for all? She's _trapped_, and not for the first time, the realization makes her want to punch him right in the throat. Especially when he barely even shrugs in response to her hardly-veiled accusation. Like, child or no child, it is no skin off his nose.

"Rebekah wants this. She always did."

To that, Caroline can only bite her tongue and savour the poison, grinding out the words through her clenched teeth. "So you don't want this."

Once again, he doesn't even bother rolling his shoulders to show his indifference. He fixes his gaze on her, hard and unbreakable as a diamond, but glimmering darker than usual beneath the dim reddish lights of the bar. "I don't care for the child being used against me."

So you care about _you_, she doesn't say. But she forces herself to roll her eyes like it doesn't surprise her, it doesn't break her heart, it doesn't disappoint her. She doesn't even look at him. She clutches the gin glass in the palm of her hand, counts three Mississippi in honour to his city, and empties the cutting-sharp liquor down the dry, burning chute of her constricting throat.

* * *

.-.

She should go home, go to Matt's (Tyler's) home, try to stop it from happening, but—

_Curiosity killed the cat, Caroline_.

"You keep calling her the child," she attacks, malevolently, the empty glass now rolling between her idle hands in a sick mirror gesture of the mannerisms that kept him occupied while he waited for her to show up. "Doesn't she have a name?"

He frowns in unexpected surprise, and looks at her over the bridge of his nose as if he doesn't understand. Why she asks. Why she cares. The fact that it is regular custom among people to name their children like, you know, they are _persons_ with names. Not that Klaus has a care about people's customs but, still, she quirks an eyebrow like, in his silence, he's the one not making any sense.

"She doesn't have a name?" How can she—? "It's been three months."

Caroline hasn't been counting the days, or the weeks. But the fruit trees in town are in full bloom already. So she knows. So it surprises her that, in response, he tilts his head, crunches his whole face like he's thinking of a proper explanation to the fact that, if Caroline is right in her guess, he truly really doesn't give a crap about the child. Not even a crap small enough to give her a name.

But strangely, what he ends up saying—

"Back in my day," —translation: a billion years ago—, "children weren't given a name until they reached a certain age. There was little point to… growing _attached_, as most infants wouldn't survive the first year. Well—" suddenly his lips twitch oddly, almost wistfully, "Obviously that wasn't the case in our village but, it was still customary in my family, as they came from the old, plague-ridden world."

Um…

Well, that's fucking grim and fucking depressing, and Caroline doesn't care to follow that train of thought. That he may not want to grow _attached_. That the world he knows and the world he lives in is a completely different world from the very limited one that she's sometimes allowed to see from within the enclosure of her small town—if only because of everything that he has seen and he has lived. She doesn't want to think about that, but, still, the words are falling off the edge of her tongue before she can even realize she is saying what she is saying.

"Your daughter isn't going to die."

Is she being… comforting? Assuring? Matter-of-factly? Has she just said—?

_Daughter_.

That's an odd word, never said before this moment. _Your daughter_. The daughter of Klaus and Hayley. The daughter of a werewolf and the original hybrid—hardly _vulnerable_, Caroline assesses. Whatever she is, she isn't human. She _can't _be human. Not entirely. Not for long.

* * *

.-.

"I'm thinking Rika."

Caroline is so caught up in the mess inside her head that it takes her at least a _century_ to realize what he is talking about. When she does finally catch up, her eyes widen before she has the time to temper her reaction into something a bit more demure and a lot more nonchalant.

"_Rika_? Oh, my God, that's _awful_."

Caught by surprise—possibly, due to the emotional charge in her expletive—Klaus wrinkles his forehead, hitches an eyebrow and kind of actually _pouts_, like this is happening a year ago, and he is still allowed to pretend that she annoys him sometimes with her insolence, and be all cute and playful and flirtatious in his pretence.

"It's Old Norse," he explains, like she _cares_. He acts like he'smarvelling at the things she doesn't know, things that he must find equally irritating and enthralling. "It was a common name in our native village," he adds with a devious smile, "so I'll know for certain that Mikael will be forevermore twisting in his grave."

Because Rika is Klaus's blood, that Mikael so desperately tried to drain. She isn't of his father's linage.

It's almost _epic_, andCaroline rolls her eyes at him to demonstrate her utter fascination, for a second forgetting how much she hates herself these days, for hating him, for breaking the trust she fought so hard to never give to him. All in vain, it was—her fighting and resisting. Still, now—_ugh_. She shakes her head.

"Spiteful much?" She rolls her eyes _again_. "Also, you buried him?"

Mikael gets a grave in which to squirm and suffer restlessly forever.

It makes no sense to Caroline, that Klaus didn't just let his father rot away, or had his hybrids brutalize his corpse and eat him afterwards or something—given how _intent_ he still is, on disturbing his rest for all eternity. But—who would have guessed?—Klaus looks almost offended that she'd suggest such a crime.

"I'm old-fashioned, Caroline."

_Caroline_. She only notices now, that he's looking at her so deadly serious.

It's _Caroline Caroline Caroline_ all the time.

No _love_, no _sweetheart_—

They're still a safe distance away from pet names, and that's—well, unsettling. That she feels comforted in the certainty that she hasn't (yet) crossed the line, but at the same time she still can feel the now familiar dull pang right over stomach. Humming painfully with the echoes of her heartbreak, and damn _him_.

He's still speaking—

"…in case you haven't noticed, I tend to get attached to dead bodies…"

—but she isn't really listening.

So, what? He keeps his demon father in a creepy vault somewhere equally creepy? Hardly what Caroline would define as _surprising_ these days. She doesn't really care. She doesn't even want to know. She only wants to stick her little white-knuckled, perfectly-manicured fist inside his rocklike chest and wrap her fingers around his black rotten heart, and just _squeeze_ as hard as she can for as long as she can, just so he feels it too, the slow-beating ache that she feels—

What fucking right had he to break a heart that she never even allowed him to even glimpse?

Let alone graze with the rough pad of his calloused thumb. Hold in his coarse palm. Crush inside the shackle of his iron fingers, forever dripping with blood.

And yet still he managed to do it, because he has a thousand years of experience ripping out hearts and squashing them to ashes. Caroline always knew, and, hey—

—_hey_—

—look how far they've come, haven't they? Once again sitting here, pleasantly discussing the matter of his father.

They're stuck, in spite of everything she's done to save herself—

—and how is that for _letting go with no regrets_?

* * *

.-.

His eyes are big and calm as he looks at her over the table, his voice steady, peaceful as still green-lake waters. "Rika means _eternal ruler_."

The comeback jumping off her lips is automatic—

"Oh, so you're naming her after _you_," she sniggers, her eyes gleaming in spite of herself. "How nice."

Her high-pitched voice rings loud and unnaturally (or was that _naturally_?) chipper with the tint of sarcasm, but (she's horrified to notice) there is no malice beneath the scorn. Of course, he _smiles_ in reply, and his entire face splits and _explodes_ into a heartfelt grin that looks almost like a miracle, bright as the eastern sunrise reflecting from the pale, bluish green of his eyes.

Caroline barely catches herself in time—

—before she returns his amused, pathetically smitten smile.

* * *

.-.

On a nearby table, unoccupied:

Kol snickers, invisible; winks deviously and clicks his tongue, positively wicked.

Bonnie raises her eyebrows, unimpressed. Doesn't need to say a word—

"Well, this is what you wanted, isn't it, _Bon_? Don't sulk. You're far too beautiful to be this mopey all the time." He curls his lips, narrows his eyes almost evilly, sharpens his devil's grin. "Why the pout? You'll be reunited with your friends soon."

He's having way too much fun with this, and how messed up is this side of the veil, Bonnie wonders, that it's Kol's enthusiasm and overall joyful attitude that ties a knot of nerves around her stomach, and not the gloomy oracles of the Spirits?

"You're happy."

"I am. Are you not?"

"You're not worried?"

"Why would I be?"

"Because your family—I mean, you can't trust that Klaus—"

"You're right, I can't," he smirks, shrugging one shoulder and tilting his head to nod towards the table which Bonnie is, for the most part, plainly refusing to look at. "But your friend Caroline can."

Caroline—

Bonnie gulps, pushing down the lump in her throat, and she wishes uselessly for a drink, or a taste of _something_. "I'm not so sure."

"Oh, come on, darling. Don't be so dreary, will you?" He claps his hands together, entwining his fingers like a cartoon villain would do, gloating with mischief. His gleeful grin looks _dangerous_—very, _very_ dangerous as far as Bonnie is concerned. But he curls it around his lips so nicely that he looks almost like an overexcited young boy when he adds, almost bouncing off his seat, "Nik is a family man now. And _in love_," he mocks, insolently. "It's a brand new world, Bonnie Bennett."

It's a brand new—

Bonnie squeezes her eyes shut, and takes in a deep breath.

—

**tbc.**

* * *

**Thank you for reading guys! I hope you liked it ;) **

**Next****: Bonnie finds a way to explain to Caroline what (the hell) is going on, and Mystic Falls is gifted with a new, very special resident. **


	4. Chapter 4

**Hey guys! First of all, I'm sorry that it took me so long to update this story. If you follow me on tumblr (theelliedoll) then you know I haven't been feeling great for the past two months. It's been hard to focus, and that's left me little to no productive time in terms of writing this story. I'm sorry, but I promise I am doing my best here. I hope that, in spite of the delay, you're still interested in the story, and will enjoy the chapter.**

**Mostly because, well—don't hate me—it'll be a while before this story gets updated again. I'm going away on holiday, and I won't have a computer or internet access for a while. I will be back in August, but in September I'm moving abroad for a while; it's going to be a very hectic month for me, so I can't make any promises. Just know that I'm really grateful to know that there are people reading this story, and I take very seriously my commitment with you guys. It will take longer, and I may struggle my way through it at times, but I am committed to this story, and I will see it through.**

**And that is all.**

**Hope you like the chapter!**

* * *

**.-.**

"Rika…"

Rebekah's voice is barely more audible than the rattling breaths jumping out of her throat. Caroline can hear it: the empty air seeping out of her rubber lungs, getting trapped in the lump knotted down Rebekah's throat. It comes as a momentary distraction from the haunting vision before her eyes. The beautiful, ivory-colored nursery in the main floor of Tyler's mansion—Matt's house; Caroline's safe haven. Look what it's become. The refuge of a hidden baby, keeping the elegant white crib, and the most beautiful baby ever born, sleeping peacefully in the confinement of the fine wood bars.

She looks like an angel. Of course.

Caroline didn't even cast one look at her, on that terrible morning she was born, in a puddle of watered-down blood and whimpering in Caroline's tiny, crappy dorm room. She can't tell now if the first months of the baby's life have changed her any, but she supposes they have—she knows that much: babies change drastically in their first few weeks. So maybe the girl wasn't born this perfect: a little chubby rose-cheeked baby doll of short honey-blond curls and pearl-white skin. She's sleeping soundly, so Caroline can't see what color her eyes are. She imagines a haunting shade of blue-sky green.

"I'm sure my father is twisting and turning in his grave," Rebekah says, finally.

And Caroline snorts, in spite of herself; her weak breath coughed-up into a quick, mirthless laugh. "Yeah, that's what your brother said."

Something about blood—the way things are always about blood, one way or another, when it comes to Klaus.

It's predictable that Caroline knows, but still Rebekah returns the laugh, with a large dose less of bitterness. Her mocking tone is almost tender, light-hearted. "No longer giving him the silent treatment? That's so… _not_ surprising."

Well, she had that one coming. So Caroline ignores the jab with grace, because really, _whatever_. It's not like her curiosity isn't one hundred percent genuine as she wrinkles up her nose, twisting her neck to look at Rebekah, whose eyes remain glued to the sleeping baby, like nothing else exists. She doesn't really understand—

"Why is it so important to piss off Mikael? He's dead. Shouldn't you all just, I don't know, _move on_?"

For a couple of breaths Rebekah doesn't say a thing. Like perhaps she's pretending she hasn't heard, or doesn't care to answer. Like maybe she's thinking about what degree of honesty and open-heartedness Caroline deserves, given the unconventional circumstances of her strange relationship with Rebekah's most dangerous, most terrible, most vulnerable brother. But at last, she speaks.

"Mikael killed Nik's father," is what she says. "He killed his entire family, making sure their bloodline would extinguish just as Mikael's, after my mother's curse. Making sure that Nik would forever be alone and… disconnected. Different. The odd one out even among his family. A _bastard_."

_A bastard_.

Well, a _bastard_ he is alright, Caroline bites against her poisonous tongue. Because, come _on_, isn't that ironic? Klaus is a gigantic _asshole_ bastard, but look at his angel baby. It's precisely because of how gigantic a bastard he is, that now—

"It's the wolf blood running through her veins," Rebekah whispers, and that explains it all, doesn't it? "It's impossible. Vampires can't procreate—"

"Yeah, well—"

"Nik's been dead for a thousand years," Rebekah interrupts Caroline's snarky interruption before she can verbally slap her absentee brother. "I remember Nik. Nik _died_. My father put a sword through his heart, like he put a sword through all our hearts. Nik was a _dead_ werewolf before he even became a vampire—"

Her words don't really trail off; they stop suddenly, like running into a wall. Like coming across an insurmountable obstacle. An unpredicted realization. Rebekah's sharp intake of breath is so sudden that it makes Caroline steer away her thoughts, at last, from her self-absorbed indignation on the issue of the whole fuck-up of Klaus and Hayley's perfect baby girl. Just like that she's focused, suddenly, as if by magic, on what Rebekah is trying to tell her without actually telling her—without, perhaps, even realizing she's trying to say anything at all. So she swallows down, shushes the insistent voice inside her head reminding her that this is none of her business and she does _not_ care, and against her better judgment curls her dry, velvet, intrigued tongue around the question.

Her voice comes out clear, open, untainted by sarcasm or any other form of pointless defense, finally. "What are you saying?"

_Nik was a dead werewolf before he even became a vampire—_

The late morning sunlight of early spring, Virginia, seeps bright and warm through the tall windowpanes above the crib. The sunrays wash over Rebekah's face like a misplaced halo, unveiling every little hint of suspicion in her slight frown as she mutters, so low she sounds like she's speaking to herself. "The witches say it's a loophole in nature. Because my brother is…_ unique_."

Yeah, well—

Caroline swallows again, noticing how the lump in her throat grows thicker the more she struggles to melt it away. What Rebekah is hinting at—

"But you don't believe that."

That the angel baby girl sleeping right _here _is a loophole in nature. A miracle.

Unplanned.

Rebakah breathes in, slowly. Like she truly needs the calming surge of oxygen rushing through her ancient, lifeless veins. Her fingers are trembling slightly, oddly; so she closes them around the brittle crib bars—and what a strange kind of anchoring, Caroline barely has time to think, before Rebekah's plaguing words fall softly, almost timidly off her abnormally-imperfect cracked lips.

"I was a dead witch before I was a vampire."

* * *

.-.

Caroline frowns so vehemently that her whole forehead hurts. Yeah, well, she thinks. _I was a dead cheerleader before I was a vampire._ What's that got to do with anything?

Before she can ask, though, before she can put on her bitchy pants and sass the hell out of Rebekah's mystical nonsensical ramblings, Rebekah's turned on her feet and blurred her flashing way to the door of the nursery, kind of like, unless she puts to good use her vampire super-abilities, no hell nor high water is going to tear her away from the crib. Like it's either a blur quicker than a breath, or else she becomes a statue of salt. Like if she dares to think as she walks away—

—she won't be able to take a step.

"Come on, Caroline," she calls, her face turned away and her dull voice echoing with obviously-fake disinterest. "There's someone downstairs I want you to meet."

* * *

.-.

"Caroline, this is Sophie."

Sophie. A hippie-looking witch who, Caroline guesses, could come from no other place in the world other than New Orleans. Not that Caroline has been even to the Big Easy, and not that she has any plans now to _ever_ visit the place, given the circumstances, but—

The leather sandals in the wintry Virginia springtime, the long skirt, the retro scarf, the collection of charms hanging from her neck and knotted around her wrists. She's obviously a witch—and a rather bohemian one, it looks like. Rather intense, too, given the squint in her eyes as she takes Caroline in, examining her, assessing that she's real, a young pretty blood-sucker, but nothing too special, and yet—look at _her_. The small-town forever-cheerful mean-girl little _girl_ who has managed to wrap the big bad hybrid around her finger, and now can't pry him off, no matter how hard she tries; how ready she is to snap her own candy-stick finger in two, if she must. To keep him away.

As if it were a form of appraisal, Sophie's handshake is firm, shaking with a distinctive lack of gentleness. "It's good to finally meet you, Caroline."

It's easy to smile her Southern Belle smile out of habit, stroke her tongue down the roof of her mouth as her grinning lips draw, _likewise_; her eyes, sparkling. But those are old human habits, acquired through a long process of incessant, steadfast training meant for a life she was supposed to live before she got caught in this mess of monsters and bastards—habits that are fading just a tiny bit more slowly than the memories. So Caroline shakes off her the tentative first steps of a smile, and secures the frown on her forehead. Because Sophie the Hippie Witch knows who Caroline is, _of course_—

—but Caroline, once again, remains groping her away deeper and deeper through the dark.

So she asks, unforgivably impolite. "Who are you?"

Sophie—whoever she is, god damn _her_—is far from abashed, or caught off-guard. Her cold, courteous smile doesn't even tremble as her eyes flicker momentarily to Rebekah, in a fleeting gesture of complicity that pisses Caroline off beyond measure. It barely lasts a second before Sophie's eyes lock onto Caroline's suspicious gaze, and she shrugs. "I'm only the messenger."

* * *

.-.

It's clear in the dark glint that catches fire in the girl's eyes, that she immediately believes her an envoy from Klaus. That she's here to pass on a message that is meant to turn her head around—about the girl, or the pretend human guardian, the cover-story to allow Rebekah access to the girl, and to this beautiful house they are all standing in.

There are some houses like this one, upriver in New Orleans. But Sophie has never really been to that part of town.

Caroline, however—

—she only knows a world of beautiful houses and quiet gardens and haunting woods, and it's strange, to place the pretty perfect picture of her in the dark, bloody world of Klaus. She's only a means to an end, as far as Sophie is concerned, but—

—Caroline doesn't look like the kind of girl fated to fulfill such a miserable role.

But who is she to wonder or second-guess?

Caroline spits fire, hands fisted over her hipbones and eyes narrowed to a small wrinkle of skin. "Yeah, well, I have _zero_ to no interest in hearing anything that he—"

"I'm not here in behalf of Klaus."

Rebekah knows, and still, Sophie is naively expecting some sort of reaction out of her. Like this is _it_. It is _real_. This is when everything falls apart. When the hidden cards lying on the card table are turned around, and finally they all can see. Where they lie, the loyalties of the witches of New Orleans. Playing triple agent in the endless war against the dark shadows of unnatural immortality.

Everything that lives, must die. Nature dictates. The witches obey.

(Rebekah—

—she was a witch, once upon a thousand years ago.)

But there are certain exceptions, you see? Sophie doesn't like exceptions, but she has learned to adapt, and so she turns around, lets herself fall on a nearby couch, like the beautiful colonial house is her house; the foster home of the miracle baby her big sister died for; the foster home of the damned and the newly forgiven. Two living vampires, a young one, and an ancient one. The ghostly echo of one who passed. A reborn human monster. A boy, a college freshman. The baby. One living witch. One witch who passed and is searching her way back. What a strange majestic house they have found to lodge—

Caroline's fingers are still gripping the belt loops of her jeans. She fumes, impatient, walking closer to the couch. "Then why are you here?"

Sophie doesn't even blink before she says what she came here to say. "Your friend Bonnie needs to speak with you."

* * *

.-.

It's as easy as magically lighting a candle.

A few catch fire around the room, strategically placed by Sophie while Caroline just sits there dumfounded, her brow pulled tight and her lips slightly gaping as a million thoughts race inside her head. Because it's not like they—

It's not like they are completely out of touch with ghosts.

It's not like they haven't communicated before. There was that time that ghosts literally _invaded_ Mystic Falls, and there was also the time that Bonnie freaking _died_ to lift the veil, and she actually—for real—graduated high school as a ghost without any of them noticing that their best friend was actually dead. Gone. Rotting somewhere in the entrails of the earth beneath the school grounds. And it's that, Caroline figures. The bitter, painful reminder that Bonnie died and they didn't even notice, went away on holiday and returned with the batteries charged ready for college—it's that gravestone of guilt that knocks the breath out of her chest and suffocates each worth struggling to climb up her knotted throat.

She knows that Jeremy still sees Bonnie sometimes. She knows that Bonnie is alright, that she is watching over them, but Caroline—

Bonnie is dead but Bonnie is also _here_, still, so Caroline doesn't miss her, okay? Caroline doesn't have to miss her. There is no reason why. She isn't _gone_. Bonnie is still _here_, and now she wants to speak with Caroline and that is _good_, that's a great thing and Caroline is so _happy_—

"As you know, Bonnie hasn't really left," Sophie confirms from somewhere far far away, her words echoing through the mist clouding Caroline's thoughts with the dull weight of distance. "She's here's with us. I'm only here so you can see her. What she has to say—well, it's better not to say through an intermediary."

Somewhere deep in the fog of her confusion, Caroline suspects she should be paying closer attention. Bonnie is here. Bonnie never left. That's true. That's good. But something is going on now, something _not_ good, and Rebekah has brought this witch from New Orleans so that Bonnie can tell Caroline—

Rebekah's loud, cut-up gasp shakes Caroline out of her perplexity, violently.

Because it's immediately followed by an unfamiliar, unexpected voice.

Not Bonnie's.

"Greetings, baby sister," Kol Mikaelson sneers from where is he is suddenly sitting, like a true apparition, right by Caroline's side on the couch, barely one hand away. "I take it by your unbecoming expression of shock you weren't expecting to see me?"

* * *

.-.

"Get _up_, Kol," Bonnie reprimands, pushing him on the shoulder from where she is standing behind the couch. "Move away. Go and give your sister a hug or something, and leave Caroline alone."

He doesn't bulk, of course. This is Kol, and if Bonnie has learned anything about Kol in the months—almost a _year_, she doesn't want to think, feeling her dead blood freezing in her limbs—that they've been forced by the fates to share their spot in the other side, is that Kol doesn't do compliance. He never passes the chance to be a belligerent, annoying little jerk, so of course Bonnie isn't surprised _at all_ when instead of standing up and letting her sit next to Caroline, he actually pats his knees, smirking deviously.

"Don't be mad, darling." He raises his eyebrow suggestively, like the true moron that he is. "We can always share."

He only taunts her because he enjoys driving her mad. It's his main source of entertainment, now that he is a dead undead creature and cannot go around tearing throats open and disemboweling innocent victims out of sport. So she won't give him the satisfaction of fuming, falling for his taunts and handing him over the upper hand. Now, under any other circumstances, she'd have no problem sitting on his lap and showing him what's what. She is _far_ from intimidated by Kol's childish games, and she has no intention of backing down. But—

Without even shaking her head, careful not to let on the slightest hint of annoyance, she simply walks to the other end of the couch, sitting on the armrest not to push Caroline's closer to Kol—something else that would probably make his day, if only Klaus was here to get affronted—and immediately grabbing Caroline's hands in hers and smiling an open, genuine smile—all thoughts of Kol forgotten in a second, as her smile trembles feebly in the corners of her mouth. Caroline's stunned gaze fills up with unshed tears, unexpectedly, even as she mirrors Bonnie's smile almost like it hurts her.

"Bon…"

She's ready to bend over, awkward as it may be—kneel on the carpet if she must—to hug Caroline now that she can, now that she has been granted a few minutes of corporeity, but before she can move or say anything else, Rebekah starts _shrieking_. She leans over on her seat, her hands fisted on her knees like she needs to keep a hold of her legs to keep herself from standing up, start flashing up and down the room, slap the flashing daylights out of her impossibly infuriating brother. Her questions only get louder and louder as her head turns almost spasmodically, from Kol to Sophie to Bonnie and back to Kol again.

"What's going on? Why are you here with the Bennett witch? You never said that my brother—you said this was about Nik and the child. What is Kol doing here? What's going on? I swear to God, I don't care how valuable you are for my two living brothers and their stupid war, I will rip your face into ribbons with my _teeth_ if you don't—"

"Shut up, Rebekah," Caroline's voice suddenly rises, from somewhere a long way deeper than her usual high, cheerful pitch. She sounds more exhausted than annoyed or confused as she insists, sounding almost beside herself. "Shut up shut up shut the hell _up_."

"But you don't understand—"

"And you don't understand either," Sophie cuts her off, standing up from her seat next to Rebekah and walking towards the fireplace. Immediately, Bonnie follows her lead and goes to stand by her side. A quick nod, and a silent agreement that springs not from their knowledge of each other, but from the detailed instructions both of them are following; and Sophie takes the wheel, momentarily. She lets her eyes fall on Kol, then on Rebekah, and finally she settles her calm and cold stare on Caroline.

"We're here to offer a deal."

* * *

.-.

This is the room where Tyler's dad used to work. On being a gigantic douchebag, probably. That's all he ever was—and yet lucky enough that he never triggered his curse. Died young but lived as an entirely different kind of monster, not bound to the moon the way his son was, for a while, before Klaus snapped his neck in two. What a strange thought—that Richard Lockwood lived uncursed, wasted his hours away in this leather-clad room (there's a room just like this, but bigger, in the Mikaelson Manor) and died incinerated because John Gilbert thought he was a vampire. Leaving the suffocating gentlemen's club room to his son to occupy. In the wake of a father that he hated, kind of—

Caroline saw Tyler trigger his curse right here in this very room.

How the fates operate, really—

Now the witches explain—

The deal is a trade, sort of.

The terms and conditions of which are explained bluntly to Rebekah, even if Bonnie's eyes keep darting to Caroline every few words or so. The summary version is clear as day: the child in exchange for the family—Rebekah's family, of course.

There are a million questions, at least. Why? How? What does it mean, letting the Spirits guard the child? How can it be possible, for the twice dead to return among the living?

Rebekah doesn't scream this time, as she processes the information. She hadn't been expecting—

Her eyes fill with tears, and she cries in silence. Tears falling down her cheeks each time she nods, like she understands. Like she gets it. But it's clear that she doesn't, as every nod is followed by a small, almost timid shake of her head. No. She frowns. She cries. _No no no no_.

"I cannot give you the child—"

She's the child's mother. From the moment when Hayley handed her over, and Rebekah nested the baby in the carrier draped over her shoulders. She brought her here to Mystic Falls. She convinced Matt to keep her—

Bonnie understands, Caroline is sure. She even smiles with sympathy as she concedes, "You wouldn't have to."

But Sophie's big brown eyes remain cold and rocklike like granite. She doesn't look away, she doesn't hesitate, she doesn't sugar-coat. "The child isn't safe."

Rebekah nods, her eyes bright, her smile shaking like a child's, her words stumbling out in puffs of breath, like a rattle. "Yes, she is," she pleads. "No one will find out. That's why we brought her here. Mystic Falls is secluded. It is isolated. She will grow up like a human—everyone will think that Matt is her guardian. My brother is gathering up his enemies a thousand miles away from here. I'm just Matt's girlfriend—no one will suspect. I will keep her safe, I promise."

Sophie closes her eyes tight, sighs, shakes her head. It's one part annoyance for each nine parts of pity. Bonnie, however—she lets the compassionate smile fall off her lips as she swallows in preparation for what she is about to say: the words yet unsaid, but that have been floating in the air since the moment Sophie started explaining—

—_the Spirits are willing to give you back your family, but they must guard the girl_.

"The baby," Bonnie says, the three syllables low but firm as if she were chanting a curse. "It's not your brother's enemies that she needs protection from."

* * *

.-.

Well—

—_obviously_.

There's no one worse—go and search in every dark corner of the word, if you don't believe me—

There's no one worse than the Big Bad Wolf.

Except, of course—

* * *

.-.

Rebekah was a dead witch before she became a vampire.

She understands the crime committed by her mother. Against nature. Against _life_ itself.

But if such a crime were ever to be _purged_—

If life could be born out of death. If life—true _life_; like the life of a living, breathing, innocent baby—could restore the balance disturbed by the curse of immortality befallen on this damned world. Then—

"Only your family can keep Silas from unleashing hell on earth," Sophie dictates, and Rebekah nods again, this time, at last, finally understanding.

Only their eternal deaths can counterbalance Silas's penance of immortality. Only the life of the child, perpetuated through eternity in the reborn bloodline that her parents extinguished with their sins against nature can counterbalance the plague of death that Rebekah and her brothers spread and will continue to multiply across the centuries—for as long as the world keeps on turning on its axis. Mikael's attempt to exterminate Rika's original bloodline triggered the millenary war between werewolves and vampires. How much blood spilled in vain? The blood of Nik's father is alive again. The original crime of her family against their kind has been redeemed. Can the war be over now?

The witches have made their move and now they must—

"I don't see the problem. It's not like Nik gives a damn about the baby, right?"

Rebekah raises her eyes to look at her brother. He looks forever unconcerned. Amused. Smug and satisfied, because this is what he wanted. A way back. Forever and a day, granted in a world that is to Kol nothing but a playground in which to have his fun indefinitely. He's lived like them for a thousand years, but just like the rest of them, Kol is trapped in his own ways. Rebekah has spent too long as the spoiled bratty entitled baby sister of a handful of very powerful men. Kol has been forever the irresponsible one, forever selfish, forever careless. Let the big brothers wage war. Let the baby sister whine. Kol was too busy having fun to care about the million ways over their family kept on and on, destroying each other again and again, watching each other recompose, only to begin tearing down their lives one more time.

"You don't know Nik," Rebekah says, and look at _that_, listen to stupid, _stupid_ Caroline gasping. Because who would have thought, that a mindless insignificant baby vampire could dig through the steel-hard skin of their brother and take a peek inside into the abyss, and remain standing on the edge afterwards. Not stumbling. Not tilting. Never falling. "Nik is capable of love, just as much as any of us. Nik loves, he loves brutally. But he can't be selfless about it."

He won't let his daughter go, for her own good. Not ever.

He won't let the witches guard her.

He won't let Matt, or Rebekah, or even Caroline—

He won't let anyone be the subterfuge in the place of someone other than himself.

He won't relinquish her fate. He won't relinquish control.

Especially if he ever finds out—

* * *

.-.

Rebekah knows—much as she hates it—that Caroline understands, even the parts that haven't been said. Especially, Rebekah supposes, the parts that haven't been said. But still it catches her off-guard when it's Caroline who speaks out loud—

"You'll have to kill Katherine." It's an emotionless statement. Like she doesn't care one way or another. On the one hand, killing humans is generally considered wrong and undesirable by Saint Caroline Forbes. On the other hand, it's no secret to anyone curious enough to ask that Katherine smothered the life out of little cheerleader Caroline for the simple fun of it, right after she came back to town, ready to hand Elena Gilbert to Nik in a silver platter. So it doesn't seem like Caroline really minds that _yes_, they'll have to kill Katherine, even though she shrugs, regretfully. "What a waste of the cure."

What a waste, indeed. But it's better not to think—

If the doppelganger dies, the thought of keeping Rika forever won't ever cross Nik's mind. But if he ever learns that the witches are willing to trade her fate for the (even if occasional) power over life and death—

—he won't ever forgive that he wasn't the one to set the terms of the deal.

Nik doesn't want Kol. He especially doesn't want Finn. Or Finn's vulgar peasant wife that will most certainly trail along, if they ever stand a chance of convincing him to come and fight (forever) with them. Rebekah knows her brother better than anyone else in the world. She has spent a thousand years by his side. She knows that if this is ever going to work—

"We can't play Nik," she explains, carefully, grabbing a hole of Caroline's misty eyes. "We can't manipulate him into agreeing to this. We can't kill Katherine behind his back, and hope that he never finds out. We can't fool him."

It's not really a matter of how they _shouldn't_ try and play Nik for a fool. It's truly an issue of how they _can't_. He's smarter than that. He'll figure it out. And then, he'll—

—then the heavens help them all.

"So what are you going to do?"

Caroline's inquisitive eyes are fixed on Rebekah, but they flash across the room as soon as Bonnie whispers her name. There's a slightly worried frown creasing Bonnie's brown, like she doesn't want to say what she's about to say. Like she doesn't like it any more than Caroline will, but she has to understand, that they all have to do their part—

"Well, Caroline, darling…" No one is surprised when Kol, leaning forward on his seat and actually resting his hand on Caroline's shoulder, squeezing it in a gesture of mock comfort, takes pity on Bonnie's struggles and decides to have a bit of fun with other people's misery, as usual. "I believe the question really is, what are _you_ going to do?"

* * *

.-.

It's so easy to fall back into her newly acquired—actually, newly _recovered_—habits of bitchiness and bitterness and indifference that she doesn't even register the change in her posture or her emotions as she shoves Kol's hand away from her shoulder, her eyes roaming the room restlessly as she scoffs.

"Me? Yeah, like that's going to happen."

"Caroline—" Rebekah tries, in vain.

"Why would I help you, huh?" Seriously, the sense of _entitlement_ of these people. "I don't care about your family. I don't care what happens to Klaus or to the baby. And I have no wish to see any more members of your psychotic family wreaking havoc and being all kinds of evil and insane all over the—"

"Caroline—"

Bonnie's whisper is gentle, but once again firm and determined enough to distract Caroline from her pointless, only half-true ranting. Because it's obvious just in the quiet, tender tone of Bonnie's voice that there is one card on the card table still to be flipped and discovered. There's something that Bonnie still hasn't told her. And not even in a million years could have Caroline guessed—

"If the Spirits are allowed to guard the child—" Translation: if some hocus-pocus is done on the baby to create a spell or something similar, Caroline figures, that will tie the girl's fate to the Spirits' plans for her bloodline… "—not only Klaus's family will be allowed to cross the veil."

Caroline gulps down. Bonnie nods. Caroline shakes her head, doesn't want to believe—but then she nods, too.

The silence is thick and heavy and warm, caressed by the flickering, slowly dying flames of Sophie's candles.

No more words are need, and so the spell is broken.

Caroline is alone in the couch, and she can't see Bonnie anymore.

But Bonnie hasn't left. Bonnie is still here.

And if Caroline can convince Klaus to accept the witches' trade and let go, relinquish control over the fate of his daughter—

(like that's an easy task, they said it. _That's when you come in, Caroline, darling. What are you going to do?_)

—Caroline, then—

(and Elena, and Jeremy, and Damon, and Stefan, and Bonnie's mom and Bonnie's dad)

—she will get her best friend back.

_Caroline, darling. What are you going to do?_

**_—_**

**tbc**

* * *

**Thanks for reading as always. I hope you liked the chapter. Not a lot of shippy stuff, sorry about that. But the stage needs to be set up. As I told you, this story is on ****hiatus**** now, but it'll be a short one. Thank you!**


	5. Chapter 5

**Hello guys! Here is the next chapter of Terrible Creatures! Sorry this is coming so late but my life has been kind of a mess this past few months. I find new canon really inspiring, so I hope I start updating more frequently now. Thanks to all of you who still care about this story. Please enjoy - and let me know if you have any questions or comments!**

* * *

**.-.**

Here she goes again. Run, run, running you go again. Each villain a stepping stone.

She goes about in circles, it feels like. Sell off Klaus to the hybrids; sell the hybrids off to Klaus. Sell the cure to Katherine; sell Katherine to Klaus. And so it begins again. Sell off Klaus to this week's archenemy.

It'd be so easy, this time around—

Marcel is clear as rain in his offer. _I need a weakness_, he says. _The bastard can't be killed_, he says, _it'd kill me_—and Hayley gets it, she's getting to really know the fucked-up deal of these vampires. It's not that Klaus can't be killed as much as the entire awful, terrible world is bound to forever sway under the pull of his hands. Now if Klaus _could_ die—

It would be so easy.

If Klaus dies, they all die. But Marcel—

He's got something to offer. _I ran the werewolves out of this town_, he says. _Give me a weakness_, he says.

And damn her luck, damn her fucked-sideways karma. She held the weakness in the crook of her arm, for a short while. She carried her in her entrails for nine nightmarish moons. She kept her warm and relatively well-fed and growing—killing her, infecting every pore of her skin, every inch of her bloodstream. And now look at her. There she goes again. There she he runs again, but can't escape, can she? She can't ever escape.

"There's a girl," she says, arms crossed over her chest and bangs flying over her forehead in fake indifference. She's signing her death sentence, not for the first time. "Back in Mystic Falls."

* * *

**.-.**

Hayley runs—

Marcel gives in the information—just directions—and Hayley _runs_—

* * *

**.-.**

Marcel almost doesn't believe her. _A girl_? But how can that be? A girl—

After all the blood and all the rules and all the vows. The bitterness and the emptiness and the loneliness of a monster not quite like any other. Such a fool. Such a temper. Such blood-thirst, unprecedented and unmatched.

And now this dirty little nobody wolf girl sniffing the cold trail of a ragged pack of stray dogs—

_There's a girl_, she says. _Back in Mystic Falls_.

And Marcel tells her what she wants to know. Where they fled. How they scattered. Tails between their legs. Mouths clad upon wounds they couldn't quite lick in relief. The wolves. The dirty, impetuous, on-the-brick of extinction muddy dogs—

"A girl," Marcel chuckles, his grin flashing with unrepressed amusement. Oh, a _girl._

That is simply too good to be true.

Poor Marcel, is the last thing she thinks, before she turns away, the rising sun waiting outside the caves; calling for her. _Poor Marcel_. She's selling off who this time?

* * *

**.-.**

_Poor Marcel_.

Little old Hayley, little nothing _nobody_ Hayley just sentenced him to death.

(She doesn't feel sorry at all.)

_I ran the werewolves out of this town_, he said.

* * *

**.-.**

They always say, _it happened too fast_. It was so quick, I didn't notice what was happening until it was over, you know? Until it was too late.

What a cliché, Caroline scoffs, disdainful. They are _vampires_.

No _too_ fast is fast enough for them not to catch up. Excuses, excuses.

Crouch at the knees, sway your weight on the balls of your feet, dig your knuckles in the pavement, break apart the road, have the stones crushed to ashes beneath the unrelenting strength of your steel bones. Ready to spring, teeth bare and growling.

They are older than her, of course. They are faster. They are stronger. But this is her _home_, you bastards. Ever heard of home-field advantage, you morons? She's been scraping her pretty, flashing pink manicured nails _raw_ for survival from the second she was reborn, and Damon the Asshole Vampire pressed his hard, inexplicably warm, solid body to hers in a gentle, comforting hug as he raised a stake to pinch her heart from behind.

Do you get _that_? Right after she remembered exactly how pathetically, overwhelmingly weak and helpless she had truly been before that _bitch_ smothered her with a pillow—

Fuck you if you're thinking you're gonna come to her _home_ with your beautifully dead olive skin and the taste of salt breeze in your pointless breath, and, what—_abduct_ her? Nope—that ain't happening, buddy. She's been here before. First it was the wolves, and then it was—guess who?—Klaus the Motherfucking Original Hybrid. Then, it was daddy, and she survived _that_. Daddy and the wolves, the sun and the cage and the vervain-drenched bullets. They hybrids and the splintering bones of her wrist, so there is _nothing_ you can threaten her with now that she will not be expecting—

She hisses and scratches and tears open the skin of one, right one inch beneath the carotid. It is so sweet, she almost loses herself enough to sigh off the adrenaline, rolling her eyes almost _bored_ and so delighted, when in a fevered blink the two vampires are sent off flying away from her. Rolling like dead weight onto the curb they're tossed. Yesterday trash, crashing and falling apart and decomposing in the streets.

Caroline can almost smell it already, the stink of rotting vampire flesh.

* * *

**.-.**

Klaus's goons are as so predictably dumb as their arrival is predictably timely.

"You have to come with us," one of them says, after they're done with her attackers. Immediately Caroline's hands fly up to her hips, tight as ropes, indignant as _hell_. Because who are _you nobody nothing_—scratch that, okay?—who does _he_ believe he is _now_ to command her? A fucking creepo is what he is, keeping her guarded like a thing of his possession. Freaking stalker. Is that the thing she is to him, deep down? The thing she is to all. Useless little flimsy Caroline, can't even take good care of herself.

Well, so what do you say now, you idiot? She was fighting back and she was—she _could_ have won, because oh, young she is, but so fucking _pissed_ you have no freaking idea what she can do to you right now. She's got cravings, you knew that?

"I am not going—"

Goon number two snaps the phone closed, and she closes her mouth, mostly out of curiosity. He hasn't said a word the whole time he's been on the phone, go figure. Just stood there silent, listening and obeying like the good dog he is. Pity, Caroline thinks with sudden malice. He's kind of cute with his bright blue eyes and his long dark hair, and for a second Caroline _imagines_, just to irk him, you see. Watch the almighty squirm and send this poor fellow to his death. But how pointless that would be. Trying to win over these brainless meatheads without a single thought of their own.

But he does smile at her a big, pretty eyes; a tiny tug at the corners of his mouth, as if to silently acknowledge their common but ignored personhood. (Except they aren't really _people_ in the traditional sense of the world, but _shush_, Goon Number Two is a lot more comfortable with that idea that Caroline is, and so her problems begin—)

"We should take you to Rebekah's."

"Take me?" she sasses, not half as offended as she should be. _Rebekah's_? She thinks, pissed beyond belief. Because you see, you piece of _moron_, it isn't Rebekah's—

"No, of course," number two smiles, _again_, kind and goofy and oh, you fool—you've already overstepped your limits. There goes your head, rolling away from your ripped-out throat. "You go there if you want, we'll just keep our eyes open in case more of Marcel's henchmen are crouching in the shadows. But you should definitely go to your friend's house."

Goon number one keeps silent. Caroline's still blood-shot eyes zoom in on number two's pretty blue eyes once again. Instinctively she darts out her tongue to swipe at the sticky vampire blood crusted over her upper lip. "Or else?"

Pretty eyes grins, so sweet—such a fool. "Or else we can wait here until he arrives, if you prefer."

* * *

.-.

Love is power, Elijah sermonized.

_Why is Marcel so powerful_, he reasoned, _if not because his people love him?_

Barely a couple of hundred years old, a young powerless upstart _boy_ that should have died in rags.

He's dead now, even if in silks and velvet. As soon as he makes sure she's alright, Marcel is dead. As soon as he designs a new plan, a better plan to hide her and make her disappear completely—

(_There is no power in love. Love is a vampire's greatest weakness. He doesn't feel. He doesn't care_.)

He will rip out Marcel's voice box with his fangs, listen to him sing then. He will dig out his entrails and suck the blood from his liver. He will keep him bleeding and burning for as long as the poison of his gums keeps surging through his little boy's veins.

And he will make a public spectacle of it, too. Throw a party like the city has never seen, to celebrate the death of the King of New Orleans.

Show it to them all, how he dies. How Klaus rules. How he disciplines those who trespass.

Let Marcel's people come at him, afterwards. All those who love him so well.

(_Love is power_.)

Let them come to him with their rage and their pain and their bleeding, burning love.

He will take them all, one by one.

* * *

**.-.**

But-

As soon as he sees her.

As soon as he is certain that she is okay.

As soon as he is certain that he can keep her safe.

Oh—

How utterly _pathetic_ of him, isn't it? That he has kept over the terrible course of the centuries the terrifying materiality of a physical body so fallible as this; that even though unbreakable, impenetrable, it has maintained the useless beating of his heart, the incessant pulsing of his victims' blood rushing enduringly through his veins. Palms that sweat with fear and tongue that grows so numb, thick and soft like the luscious velvets of so many belle époques gone by. Nerves frizzing and pulse thundering. Head dizzied and eyes blurry and crazed with terror.

Oh—

How utterly, unforgivably pitiable of his black rocklike heart, to dare fall so easily and crack open with such creatural sentiment, for so long beating latent and undiscovered.

* * *

**.-.**

He stands on the porch like a misbehaving dog and feels the red coals of anger scorching his lungs inside out. She doesn't step out. She doesn't come to greet him. She doesn't even show her face, walk into the foyer so that he can at least see her, just make sure that she's okay. Can't she understand that this is all his—?

"Your wolf-bitch," Rebekah accuses from the other side of the majestic doorframe and, _good Lord_—

—there's this fleeting second of displacement in which he doesn't quite know what she means. His wolf-bitch? He doesn't realize, at first; but look at that. There is a baby cooing in Rebekah's arms and how is that even possible. It's been over a thousand years since the last time mother allowed Rebekah to hold a child, so that she could learn the purpose and mission of their very special kind.

So how is it possible that—?

The child's mother, he remembers. The wolf. He let her live because Caroline—

Displacement ceases in a hurried heartbeat, as quick as it had come.

"Caroline!"

He's shouting. Look at him, where are his manners? The baby's cooing immediately turns into blubbling and squirming and protesting, and Rebekah soothes, Rebekah shushes, Rebekah rocks and cradles—but he doesn't care, doesn't stop to think or even acknowledge—"Caroline!" he insists.

"For God's sake, Nik!" Oh what a mess they're making. Now Rebekah, still rocking the screaming baby against her chest, begins shrieking too as she twists her neck and turns her hips to call inside the big house. "Caroline! Will you come outside now, please? Nik's throwing a tantrum and he's scaring the baby! Again!"

You can't tell they aren't family now, can you? What a temper they pack. What insensibility. Look at the poor baby girl—look how she cries. Big fat tears stream down her plum cheeks. The intense sky blue of her wet eyes is almost radioactive. Weren't her eyes the color of evergreen, like his were when he was a young lad? He gets distracted by looking at her, eyes narrowed and inquisitive. What a little thing she is—she looks so easy to break apart. He could tear her to shreds with just his little finger. Many others could, too. Any creature of the dark. Any bad man on this earth. If they could find her, they could finish her as quickly and unpredictably as she was made. Only a little baby. A potential insignificant human girl who wasn't here a few months ago and who won't be here in a handful of decades. A speck of dust in the desert of his infinity. She'll be gone before he can even get used to the idea of her existence.

"How _demented_ are you? No, really. I want to know." The familiar high-pitched voice ties a knot inside his chest, and the pit at the bottom of his stomach—that pit that opens when he thinks of time and Rika and the endless inconveniences of living an eternity alone—closes in a clotted breath, buried by the cement floor of her baby blue eyes landing on him, indignant yet longing as ever. "What sort of messed-up gene runs in your family of crazy people? We are _all_ vampires. I can hear you _whisper _over the deadly quiet of this freaking haunted house. You don't have to yell."

* * *

**.-.**

It wasn't _that_ easy, making Katherine disappear before he got here, you know?

He may not be able to get inside the house but it's not exactly a wild guess to figure that he'd be able to recognize the scent of an unfamiliar human living in the house he's chosen as a safe place for the kid. Wouldn't he be curious? Wouldn't he suspect? Especially if the unfamiliar human scent is strangely reminiscent of a trail he tracked for five hundred goddamned years, you see.

Freaking suicide mission they are all in, now.

Rebekah's right that they can't kill Katherine behind his back now. They can't take that decision away from him—sacrifice his kid's eternity _because_. Not that Caroline thinks it isn't unbearably fucked-up to grab your child, feed her your blood and snap her neck in two like one opens a fortune cookie. But hey, this is Klaus she's talking about. She's still not entirely sure that the reason Rebekah's has practically pushed her outside the front door of Tyler's house and closed it on her ass isn't that she too is worried that Klaus is going to flip and eat the child if he spends more than five minutes in her company.

She was still screaming in Rebekah's arms when she left them on the porch to discuss their… stuff.

Caroline can't even be sure she wouldn't have eaten the child herself if Rebekah hadn't managed to calm her down as soon as she got to the nursery in the east wing. Which is a nasty, insincere thought; but it appropriately reminds her—

"Rebekah says it was Hayley." He doesn't even look at her. He's sitting inches away in the front steps of the house and she can feel every unconscious movement of his body—the swell of his chest and the slight tremor of his hands. But he's hiding his face from her view, chin tucked against his chest, eyes glued to the gravel path that opens a couple of steps beneath his boots. He looks ashamed, and Caroline sort of wants to laugh, because how fucked up is that? "Rebekah says that only Hayley knew about me. That she told that guy, Marcel, to hurt me to get back at you, because you're stealing all his toys down in New Orleans."

What she doesn't get is this: what does Hayley get with all of this, besides a tight noose wrapped inevitably around her neck? Does she hate Caroline so much that she thought she'd take her down with her? Doesn't Caroline get some credit for extending Hayley's doomed little life for a few months at least, after she allowed her to pop out the baby in _her _dorm room? She still hasn't managed to completely remove the odor of disgusting wolf bitch from the cheap nasty carpet, you know?

"Don't worry about Hayley," he says, his voice a low, thick hum. "She will be dead in a matter of hours."

"Good." She still wants to laugh—but right at this instant, she wants to cry too. "Be careful you don't knock her up again this time."

* * *

**.-.**

It's plain and simple in her head.

Hayley conspired to free Klaus's hybrids from their sick gross sire bond, and then she played him so he'd kill the useless remnants of his freaky stupid army, so that a creepy insane college lecturer could _maybe_ resuscitate her indifferent, baby-abandoning parents. She might have told Klaus that the hybrids were planning to bury him in concrete and thus helped him be better prepared for a fight he had no chance of ever losing—but she's the reason why the hybrids—Tyler the Head Conspirator included—weren't brainwashed into eternal obedience to begin with, so yeah—

—she kind of was dead meat from the onset.

But then Klaus found her sometime for some reason, and instead of killing her like he was supposed to he went and fucked her and also impregnated her. And look at them now—

—the endless cycle of indifferent baby-abandoning parents is renewed.

* * *

**.-.**

"There's a girl," he says, after a while.

"Another girl?" Caroline scoffs. "You _are_ a sentimental fool."

It's perhaps their shared tragedy, the fact that they both know those are just words—that propels him to chuckle in good humor, despite the resentment that underlies the empty accusation. "Don't be jealous, love. She's just a child."

Oh, _another_ child. That's exactly what they all need right now. More children to mess up entirely.

"Well it's not like I can legally buy beer, right?"

There's a barely concealed sadness in her half-mocking reproach. They are _all_ children. It's not like Hayley can legally buy beer, either. And she just born and gave birth to the most important creature in the history of supernatural existence. Just _look_ at them. But he doesn't—

"She's a very powerful witch," he continues, ignoring the jab. Perhaps he does feel guilt of a kind—perhaps he does feel shame, sometimes. At least, if at all, when she's sitting so close to him that their elbows keep bumping into each other. Perhaps, that's why she doesn't attack this time. Doesn't crack a joke about how _another_ witch might be even a worse scenario than another girl or another child.

She's not told him about the witches yet.

She hasn't figured out if she wants to tell him at all. What to say and what to hide. Accept the fact that here she stands again, pleading with him. Playing her part. Getting involved with the devil even now that he's hasn't just tried to kill her best friend in innumerable occasions and also murdered Aunt Jenna and Tyler's mom and millions of other innocents over the whole course of History—but he has also broken her heart. Will she ever forgive him for that?

And yet, here she sits. Listening to him say—

"Could I convince you to come with me to New Orleans?"

She cannot believe—

He raises eyes his eyes, at last; meets her wide eyes and shocked expression and immediately rectifies the course of what he is saying. "Not indefinitely, of course. Just for a few days, to see this witch I tell you about. Marcel already knows about you—he's going to keep on sending more and more of his soldiers to try and hurt you, and I can't protect you if you stay here. I could stay here with you, but I'm not sure it's safe to lure my enemies to this place while Rika is…"

His words trail off and quickly as they appear, his eyes go back to hiding as soon as he mentions the girl's name. It's unfair on a million different levels that he's asking her to leave her home, her mom and her friends and go with _him_ of all people, so that he can continue to protect the daughter he has deserted. Hayley's daughter.

That child is not Caroline's problem, and she doesn't care what happens to her.

She doesn't want to go with Klaus _anywhere_ but, fuck it. Angry as she may be, it's not like she can snap her fingers and make the feelings disappear. She's been pushing those down and trying to bury them and trying to forget and ignore and pretend since he walked into her life and she _can't_—

* * *

**.-.**

She doesn't want to put his daughter in danger.

It may be that she's still a tiny bit human inside and can't stomach the thought of innocent babies getting brutally murdered because their dads happen to be gigantic assholes.

It may be that, even if she hates every second of it, she cares about Klaus in a manner and depth she is not willing to examine right now. And she knows—deep down, she _knows_—that he cares about the kid.

Perhaps—

It may even be that she cares about the original bitch extraordinaire, and she can't even begin to imagine the kind of pain she would be in, if something happened to her little girl.

* * *

**.-.**

Or perhaps—

It may be that Caroline is a lot more selfish than she is willing to admit to herself.

Perhaps she hasn't been able to stop thinking about what Bonnie said.

Perhaps the clarity of the pitch dark night—so close to the sunrise now—is making her realize—

Perhaps she only wants the child to be safe so that she can convince Klaus to hand her over to the witches, so that she can get her best friend back.

* * *

**.-.**

(Or perhaps—

Perhaps she loves him, and she's been condemned to spend the rest of forever hating herself for it.)

* * *

.-.

"There is something I need to tell you," she whispers, when the night-time sky begins to pale. Her voice is quiet and for once there is no snark, no bitterness or reproach. _It's about Rika_, she thinks, but can't bring herself to say out loud.

It's probably the trembling tone and not the secretive words that make him raise his head, look her wide and open in the eye as his eyebrows arch in a silent question.

She can't tell him now, she knows. She can't tell him here. She has to think of a plan first. Come up with the right words—the exact amounts of truth he needs to be able to trust her. She can't tell him anything. Not yet. But she can do something else instead.

"Why do you want me to see this girl? The child witch?"

"She knows Marcel," he swallows, breathing deep. "She will be able to protect you."

Will she?

Will this witch in New Orleans be in touch with the Spirits, too? Does she know about their plan? Does she know about the girl? Is she also playing her dutiful part so that the spirits' design is completed?

Only one way to find out, Caroline.

"I'll go with you," she agrees, voice firm and eyes open. _Only for a few days_.Now that she has started, she can't stop looking at him. Not even when the bright orange light of the dawn begins to peek over the darkness of the tree tops. She even smiles, this time. "But there is something you I need you to do for me, too."

* * *

**.-.**

_Caroline, darling. What are you going to do_?

* * *

**.-.**

"Any news?"

Diego sits comfortably on the chair in front of the old mahogany desk, crossing his legs at the ankles as he stretches his back. The bones of his neck crack as the muscles over his shoulders elongate. He's trying to shake off an exhaustion that is unreal—force of habit, perhaps. The immaterial weight of stress. He's a vampire. He shouldn't be this tired. He shouldn't be this worried, either.

"He's left town, as predicted."

Marcel nods, his perennial smile twisting awkwardly. "You understand why I had to do it, don't you, my friend?"

Diego mirrors the gesture, sitting up straight. "They were both happy to do it, you know that."

Go to meet your maker—your _other_ maker—in a no-good insignificant small town in fucking Virginia. Go and die for the cause. Go and die for your master.

Klaus needed to be dragged out of town.

Diego gets that. He understands. He would have done it without questions if Marcel had asked, but he is sure he would have fought a better fight for his life. He would have found a way to make it back somehow. But yeah, he understands. Why Marcel had to do it. Why the guys went so willing to their grave.

What he doesn't understand is—

Well, he knows better than even finishing that thought.

"The girl?"

"There was no time. Klaus's men were on them before they could do any real damage to—"

"I mean _Davina_," Marcel interrupts, unnaturally impatient. His eyes twitch, his fingers fidget. "I could care less what happens to Klaus's cheerleader vamp as long as she keeps him well distracted."

Diego flinches in response to the unfamiliar venom. The boss's pissed. Again. He gets how royally fucked he is now that Klaus has stolen the little witch, but the thing is—and don't misunderstand him, he isn't contesting orders here. He isn't protesting. He isn't speaking up. But, you see, the harsh truth is—what does he expect them to do about it?

"There are three of them, boss," he spits, clicking his tongue in annoyance. He rolls one shoulder, frowns with just the right side of his face. "The hybrid might be lethal but everyone knows he is a sick fucking loose cannon. Elijah though?" He shakes his head in resignation. "Elijah is one cold unflinching motherfucker."

* * *

**.-.**

"I don't trust you," he keeps saying. Again and again and again.

She launches on the sumptuous sofa and flips through the endless list of TV channels. She's bored. She's not stupid—she knows there aren't that many perks to exchanging one prison for another, as comfy and luxurious as her new home may be. But so much sitting and waiting is making her…itchy. She's been sitting and waiting her whole life and it's so _close_ now. Her destiny. Her purpose.

Uggh.

Can Klaus and her little girlfriend just get here already?

"I've told a million times," she half rolls her eyes, half pouts. "I serve a greater power. That's why I came here. I am only doing what I am supposed to do."

He smiles at her. He always smiles at her. And, as every time he does, Davina's eyes are unavoidably drawn to him. Klaus's smile is big and goofy and dripping with fake charm—it is so easy to dismiss him. Elijah, however—Elijah's smile is just beautiful. It's as kind as it is eerie, gentle and terrifying at once. It's like a spell. It captivates and entraps her and—worst of all, it distracts her. It fills her head with thick dark clouds and for a few seconds, she stops seeing. She loses focus. She forgets what is to come and ignores what has been revealed to her.

His dark eyes glimmer, and he speaks, so deep and quiet. "That's exactly what I'm worried about, Davina."

She swallows. She squeezes her eyes shut. She forces herself to turn her back to the TV once again, and counts to five before she opens her eyelids to the transitory world outside one more time.

* * *

**Tbc.**

**So... I'm taking this story to New Orleans for a little while. I'm not thrilled about that - I don't want to rehash anything I did with Mardi Gras. So let's see what happens. But right now the plot requires a bit of KC bonding beneath the lights and colours of the Big Easy. ;) **

**Hope you enjoyed the chapter! Thanks for reading!**


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